Courting Trouble (19 page)

‘You’re really my . . . my father?’ I said warily.

‘I believe so. And I’ve come to offer you an unreserved apology.’

‘Oh’ was all I could manage to say.

‘And an explanation. So . . .’ He spread his hands open, ‘what do you know about me? If anything.’

A stridency of questions and exclamations exploded in my head. Where to begin? ‘Well, I know you were an undercover policeman.’

‘Who stole the identity of a dead child!’ my shell-shocked mother seethed beside me, having finally found her vocal cords.

‘So you know about that?’ The man winced. ‘Yeah, well, I’m not proud of it. At first I thought the tactic was justified because we had this mission to accomplish . . . The monitoring of political activists was in the greater good, and all that. Your choice of undercover name was of fundamental importance because on that would rest your whole sense of security, confidence and ability to do the job . . .’

‘A dead boy!’ my mother repeated, appalled.

‘It’s true. I was given a fake passport, driving licence and a national insurance number in his name, to make my persona more credible, you know, in case the protesters ever became suspicious and investigated me . . . But then, each year, I celebrated the birthday of that dead kid, realizing his parents were at that point thinking about their son and missing him like mad, and I’d get this really shitty feeling. It was almost like dancing on his grave. And then I fell in love with this kooky, funny Aussie girl . . .’

He smiled up at Roxy, flashing one gold tooth. ‘Falling in love with you, Roxy, was kinda outside police guidelines for undercover operations . . . So I had to leave. Even though I loved you like crazy, I knew you’d be better off without me. So I told you I had to go on the run. But the whole experience totally nauseated me. I quit the force soon after. Joined the army. Went on tours of duty. Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan . . . I’ve been knocked down, locked up, shot, bitten, kicked and almost drowned, yet I’m pretty robust and largely intact, apart from half a thumb lost from a crocodile bite.’

He was trying so hard, it felt as though he was doing a one-man show at the Edinburgh Festival.

‘But the one thing I missed was you, Roxy. My daily share of the wonderful here and now. And all the love that nourishes us through the appalling mystery of what the hell we’re doing on this big hunk of rock spinning through the universe . . . Sure, there were other women. Hey, I’m no angel. But I could never settle. Just kept moving on. And then I started asking around about you. That’s when I found out you had a baby. My baby. And that you’d been looking for me to tell me all those years ago. I was gutted. Blown away. Once I knew about Matilda and Portia, I just had to come back. And so, here I am. Hoping you can find it in your heart to forgive me and let me be part of your family.’

A tangible silence fell like dust over all of us. Finally, Roxy spoke.

‘Really? You disappear for thirty-four years and you think you’re going to waltz back into our lives and sit around and exchange pleasantries about the wallpaper and the weather . . .? You used me, you bastard!’

My mother tried to swat him like a fly, despite the fact that he was six foot to her five.

‘I loved you so much, you mongrel! But then I had to accept that you never existed. You lied from go to whoa. Yes, we imagined that our phones might be tapped or that some asshole might look at our post . . . but to find out that there was a spy in your bed! Jesus!’

‘I just can’t believe I’m seeing you again, Roxy,’ my father – Danny – said. ‘And that you’re even more beautiful than ever.’

‘Well, I’m sorry I can’t say the same for you, you prick.’

Danny’s smile seeped away.

‘You told me you were a gardener, doing cash-in-hand jobs in well-heeled Hampstead, but that politics was really “your thing”. You just used me as your girlfriend so you could portray yourself as this fully rounded person and get access to the protesters. People trusted me, so they welcomed you, too. Jesus, Danny! After the police busts there was a big crisis. The animal rights campaigners suspected there was an informer in our midst. Special Branch even raided our place, saying they “were looking for Danny” . . . Of course, you weren’t there. Why? Because you’d orchestrated the bloody raids by your police mates to bolster your bloody cover story! Then you began to tell me that you had to go on the run abroad to escape the cops. I wanted to go with you, but you said it was too dangerous. You promised to contact me so I could join you. Then I found out I was up the duff . . . but didn’t know how to reach you. I was so worried about you. So I just waited and waited and fretted for your friggin’ call that never came.’

Portia was looking confused and a little frightened. I took her gently by the shoulders. ‘Your amazing grandma raised me on my own while working full time as a barmaid
and
getting a law degree.’

‘Yeah, and all the time I blamed myself for the fact that my daughter didn’t have a dad. If only I’d been braver and gone on the run with you! If only I’d been more supportive! . . . I didn’t date anyone else. I just stayed loyal to you, my Robin Hood . . . my Ned Kelly . . . And all the time you were in cahoots with the cops!’

Big, tough Danny wilted under her reproachful glare. ‘Yeah, well, you have every reason to hate me, I know that.’

‘Hate you? That doesn’t even start to cover it. When I found out about your alias and how you’d lied and tricked me . . . well, it made it impossible for me ever to trust another bloke. I’m going to ring the police and report a theft – my lost youth. The police stole it from me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done to have been chosen by the State to be treated like this.’ Roxy was almost shouting.

‘Roxy was part of Greenpeace. She was no threat to national security,’ I admonished him. ‘Plus she had nothing to hide. Her answering machine said, “Hi, I can’t come to the phone right now as I’m out plotting the downfall of the capitalist state!”’

‘And what was Matilda?’ Roxy demanded. ‘Collateral damage? And now you honestly think that coming here and confessing will miraculously absolve you of all lies and duplicity?’

‘No.’ His voice was metallic with regret.

‘In fact, how did you find us? Christ! . . . Have you been spying on me?’

‘I asked around . . .’

‘Oh my God. You’ve been spying on us!’

‘And you look so much better in real life than through binoculars,’ Danny joshed. ‘I’m joking!’ he added, seeing my stricken face.

‘And you expect me to believe that you’ve bloody well changed?’ Roxy fumed. ‘You’re as underhanded as ever. Get out of our lives!’

‘One of the Countess’s new chauffeur bodyguards. He was with me in the Special Demonstration Squad all those years back. He remembered you and told me.’

‘That two-faced shit weasel’s so sacked! As are you! We don’t want you anywhere near us.’

‘Is that how you feel, too, Matilda?’ Danny asked me flatly.

I took my emotional temperature. With the unexpected impact of meeting my father for the first time, I’d needed an airbag installed in my brain. But after hearing my mother’s tirade, my shock had mutated into disdain. What was this man to me? Roxy had been both mother and father. ‘You mean nothing to me,’ I told him bluntly.

Roxy gave a sigh of relief. ‘Right then. That’s settled. Let’s go home. If I look at this pathetic spectacle too much longer my retinas will detach with disgust.’ Roxy put a protective arm around Portia. But my daughter eeled out of her grasp.

‘He means something to me!’ Portia exclaimed. ‘We’ve been secretly meeting and talking for weeks. He’s told me all about his past and how sorry he is for what he did to you, Gran. He didn’t even know you’d had a baby! As soon as he found out he came back to say sorry.’

‘Sweet Jesus! You’ve been secretly meeting up with my granddaughter for weeks?’ The words flew from Roxy’s mouth like bullets. ‘Is there no end to your duplicity? And why here? In the dark, in a park?’

‘He’s been teaching me to navigate by the stars.’

Danny’s broad shoulders were now up around his ears. ‘I should’ve come to you first, Roxy. But I kinda lost my nerve. Weird, an old soldier like me. But I just wanted to see my darling granddaughter, who is more exquisite than words can say . . . And to meet my beautiful daughter . . .’ He smiled up at me.

‘You have to give him another chance.’ Portia’s expression was polite but sullen, her eyes bright and defiant beneath an overlong fringe.

Roxy and I looked at each other, suddenly united, our differences forgotten.

‘You’re obviously keen to be orphaned, Portia,’ Roxy told her. ‘I mean, you’re clearly trying to kill your mother and me.’

Portia gave us a look which said ‘Raising parents isn’t as easy as it’s cracked up to be.’ ‘My dad’s disappeared. But my granddad’s turned up. It’s meant to be, can’t you see?’ My daughter’s dark-blond eyebrows were drawn up as tight as an archer’s bow. She had such a serious face, yet there was hope all over her – she was positively perfumed by it.

‘I’m sorry he left you,’ Danny said to me. ‘Your old man. Portia told me he buggered off.’

This rocked me. My husband had just disappeared, like a snowman melting, until all that was left of him was a pool of blue water – arctic cold and sorrow coloured. Portia never spoke to me of her dad’s departure – yet here she was, opening up to this complete stranger.

‘Where is he now? . . . Do you want me to find him for a little “chat”?’ Danny adopted a military stance and cracked his knuckles menacingly.

‘You’d have to go to Tibet, where I believe he is currently “finding himself”. Not that it’s any of your business.’

‘How could he leave you three fabulous females? I’m over my wild ways – living off the land, sky-diving out of airplanes behind enemy lines . . . all that James Bond shit. I don’t need all that excitement any more. All I need is you, Roxy. You and my girls.’

‘You need me? But where were
you
when
I
needed
you
? Where were you when I had to rush Matilda to the hospital at two in the morning? Or fix the hole in the roof when the rain came through? Or bash the cat burglar over the head with the bread board? Where were you then, you mangy bastard?’

‘I’m sorry, Rox,’ Danny said. I could smell the regret on him, a sour tang like earth and mildew. ‘Let me make it up to you. And you, too, Tilly. I’d do anything to make it up to you both.’

His voice was full of remorse. If he were a medieval monk, he’d be flagellating himself before bed every night.

‘The way you can make it up to us is to stay out of our lives.’ Roxy pulled Portia down the hill towards the car.

‘How can you be so cruel!’ Portia cried, digging in her heels. ‘Mum!?’

‘I agree with Roxy. Let’s go.’

‘I’m never speaking to either of you again!’ she cried out, running for the gate.

Roxy glowered darkly at the man she’d once loved. ‘Chaos, panic, disorder . . . your work here is clearly done, Danny.’

Attempting to keep both my mother and my daughter happy made me feel like a gymnast trying to balance on a beam. Roxy forbade me from making any contact with my biological father, while Portia forbade me to ignore him. Which left me no time to fathom how I felt about suddenly having a father. I was a minestrone of emotions.

‘He’s my grandfather. The only grandfather I’ve got. Why can’t we give him another chance?’ my daughter beseeched me over supper later that evening.

My mother made the kind of facial expression last worn by a slug upon finding itself stuck on a pesticide pellet.

‘Maybe we could give him another hearing, Mum? He seems genuine.’

‘I’d rather spend time with a cockroach. Although they’re rather alike. Both scavenge off others and know how to empty a room.’

I laughed, which only infuriated my daughter all the more.

‘You’re impossible! Both of you!’ she shouted, stomping back to her room without finishing her meal, her narrow hips swishing.

‘Remember how excited we were when she learnt to talk?’ Roxy said plaintively.

All I heard from Portia for the rest of the weekend was the ‘Tss, tss, tss’ of her earphones. When I tried to talk to her, she’d punish me by turning up the volume on bands with names like ‘Phlegm’, ‘Nappy Contents’ or ‘Regurgitated Sick’. The only inhabitants in the house she would talk to were Chantelle, Phyllis and her ferret – oh, and Sheldon, the introverted tortoise.

Occasionally, she’d emerge from her lair to throw open the refrigerator door and declare, ‘There’s nothing to eat in this house.’ The following week, she took to skulking in a battered second-hand leather jacket. Actually, it looked as though the jacket was wearing her rather than the other way round. I had no doubt it was Danny’s. Brooding, eye-rolling, refusing to eat with the family – it would seem that clichéd terrible-teen behaviour had seriously set in.

When I checked my emails before bed, there were two or three from Jack, wondering if I’d been abducted by aliens. I deleted them, unanswered, and went to bed, as I had enough trauma to deal with, without tossing Jack into the psychological mix.

By 8 a.m. Monday morning I was on the train to Birmingham to attend a Crown Court case involving a self-taught hypnotist and part-time astrologist who was suing my client for unpaid bills. My client, a married mum of three who had been seeking help for weight loss, maintained that the hypnotist had put her into a trance and told her that she was his sex slave. She awoke during one session covered in ejaculate, to find him fondling her breasts, his pants around his ankles. ‘Now that’s what I call a “happy medium”,’ Roxy had quipped.

After a long day in court trying to charm the jury with bad jokes about hypnotists (‘All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand’) or astrology (‘I don’t believe in star signs. I’m Cancerian and we’re naturally mistrustful’), I was standing on the rain-sodden, windswept train platform at 6 p.m., shivering, tired and already contemplating my warm pyjamas and hot chocolate, when an announcement came over the public address system that there’d been a storm and there were leaves on the line. Passengers exchanged nervous glances. Oh no. Were they the kind of leaves Network Rail liked or not? I rang Roxy. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be home. Apparently, there are leaves on the line, which you’d think would only be a problem if they were still attached to a tree.’