The Other Side of the Story Read online

  ‘Dad!’

  Before we go any further, I have to tell you that my father works in the sales department of a big confectionery company. (I’m not going to say their name because under the circumstances I don’t want to give them any free publicity.) He’s worked for them my entire life and one of the perks of the job was that he could have as much of the produce as he wanted – free. Which meant that our house was always littered with bars of chocolate and I was more popular with the kids on the road than I might otherwise have been. Of course Mam and I were strictly forbidden from buying anything from the rival companies, so as not ‘to give them the edge’. Even though I resented his diktat (which wasn’t really a diktat at all, Dad was far too mild for diktats) I couldn’t find it in myself to go against it and although it’s ridiculous, the first time I ate a Ferrero Rocher, I actually felt guilty. (I know they’re a joke, all that ‘ambassador, you are spoiling us’ stuff, but I was impressed, especially by their roundyness. But when I casually put it to Dad that his crowd should start playing around with circular chocolates, he gazed at me sadly and said, ‘Is there something you’d like to tell me?’)

  ‘Dad, I’m here with Mam and she’s very upset. What’s going on, please?’ Instead of my father, I was treating him like a bold child, who was doing something idiotic but would knock it on the head as soon as I told him to.

  ‘I was going to ring to talk to you later.’

  ‘Well, you’re talking to me now.’

  ‘Now doesn’t suit me.’

  ‘Now had better suit you.’ But alarm was building in me. He wasn’t crumbling like something crumbly, as I’d expected he would the moment I spoke sternly.

  ‘Dad, me and Mam, we’re worried about you. We think you might be a little…’ How could I say this? ‘A little mentally ill.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You think you’re not. Mentally ill people often don’t know they’re mentally ill.’

  ‘Gemma, I know I’ve been a bit distant for the past while, I’m well aware of it. But it’s not from senility.’

  This wasn’t going the way I’d expected at all. He didn’t sound bonkers. Or chastened. He sounded like he knew something that I didn’t.

  ‘What’s going on?’ My voice was little.

  ‘I can’t talk now, there’s a problem here needs dealing with.’

  Snippily I said, ‘I think the state of your marriage is more important than a tiramisu-flavoured bar of –’

  ‘SSSSHHHH!’ he hissed down the phone. ‘Do you want the whole world to know about it? I’m sorry I ever told you now.’

  Fright deprived me of speech. He’s never cross with me.

  ‘I will call you when I can talk.’ He sounded very firm. A little like… funnily enough, a little like a father.

  ‘Well?’ Mam asked avidly when I hung up.

  ‘He’s going to call back.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as he can.’

  Chewing my knuckles, I was uncertain of what to do next. He didn’t sound mad, but he wasn’t acting normal.

  I simply couldn’t think what I should do. I’d never been in a situation like this before and there was no precedent or set of instructions. All we could do was wait, for news that I instinctively knew wouldn’t be good. And Mam kept saying, ‘What do you think? Gemma, what do you think?’ Like I was the adult and had the answers.

  The only saving grace is that I didn’t get all cheerful and say, ‘How about a nice cup of tea?’ Or even worse, ‘Let’s get a brew on.’ I don’t think tea ever fixes anything and I vowed that, no matter what, this crisis would not turn me into a tea-drinker.

  I considered driving over and confronting him at work, but if he was in the middle of a tiramisu-flavoured crisis, perhaps I wouldn’t even get to see him.

  ‘But where would he stay?’ Mam blurted plaintively. ‘None of our friends would let him move in with them.’

  She wasn’t wrong. The way it worked with their circle of friends was that the men held the purse strings and the car keys but the women were the power-brokers in the home. They had the final say over who came and went, so that even if one of the men had promised Dad he could kip down in their spare room, his wife wouldn’t let him over the threshold, out of loyalty to Mam. But if not one of his friends’ houses, then where?

  I couldn’t imagine him in a mildewed bedsit with a gas ring and a rusty kettle that didn’t click off automatically when it boiled.

  But if he had taken some mad notion he’d last no length away from Mam and his home comforts. He’d spend three days playing with his golf ball machine and come home when he needed clean socks.

  ‘When’s he going to ring back?’ Mam asked again.

  ‘I don’t know. Let’s watch telly.’

  While Mam pretended to watch Sunset Beach, I wrote the first email to Susan. Susan – known as ‘my lovely Susan’ to distinguish her from any other Susans who mightn’t be quite as lovely as she was – had been one-third of the triumvirate, with me and Lily the other two, and after the great debacle she’d taken my side.

  Only eight short days ago, on January the first, she’d moved to Seattle on a two-year contract as PR for some huge bank. While she was there she’d hoped to bag herself a Microserf but it had taken no time to discover that they all work twenty-seven hours a day, so they don’t have much time left over for a social life and romancing Susan. Drinking multiple-choice coffees can only fill the gap so far, so she was lonely and looking for news.

  I kept the details brief, then pressed ‘send’ on my Communicator Plus, a huge brick of a thing with so many functions it could nearly read your thoughts. Work had given it to me, in the guise of a present. Yeah, right! In reality it just made me more of a slave than I already was – they could contact me in any way they wanted, whenever they wanted. And the weight of it tore the silky lining of my second-best handbag.

  When Sunset Beach ended and Dad still hadn’t rung back, I said, ‘This isn’t right. I’m going to ring him again.’

  2

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: Gemma [email protected]

  SUBJECT: runaway dad, still at large

  OK, more news. You’re going to need a Valium when you hear, so don’t read any further until you’ve got it. Go on, go.

  Back? Ready? Right. My father, Noel Hogan, has a girlfriend. It gets worse. She’s thirty-six. Only four years older than me.

  Where did he meet her? Where do you think? Work, of course. She’s his – God, the tedious predictability of it – his PA. Colette’s her name and she has two children, a girl of nine and a boy of seven, from another relationship. She wasn’t married to the other man and when I told Mam she said, ‘Small wonder. Why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free?’

  The story goes that they’d spent a lot of time working on the new tiramisu bar, and become very close.

  Yes, I’d already told Susan about the tiramisu bar. I know it was a secret and I’d promised Dad I wouldn’t tell anyone, but Susan had such enthusiasm for the topic that I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. She’d love to do a thesis on the subject ‘From Curly Wurly to Chunky KitKat – whither bars of chocolate in the twenty-first century’. ‘Think of the research I’d have to do,’ she says.

  I had to leg it home from work (leaving two hundred frisky chiropractors in the hands of Andrea) and weasel the info out of Dad like it was a game of twenty questions. ‘Do you owe money?’ ‘Are you sick?’ Then finally I hit bedrock with, ‘Are you having an affair?’

  It’s only been going on three months – or so he says. What’s he doing walking out on a thirty-five-year-old marriage for a three-month fling? And when was he planning on telling us? Did he really think he could just pack a suitcase one Tuesday morning and leave for good without ever having to explain himself?

  And the yellow-bellied cowardice of the man. He fesses up to me, on the phone, then leaves me to break the news to Mam. He-llo? I’m his daughter. She’s his wife.
But when I reminded him of this he sez, ‘Ah no, you tell her, women are better at that sort of thing.’

  He didn’t even have the kindness to let me go and tell Mam immediately; he had to Share The Joy about Colette, while Mam watched like a wounded animal.

  ‘She makes me feel young,’ he declared, like I should be happy for him. Then he said – and before he even said it, I knew he was going to – he said, ‘I feel like a teenager.’ So I said, ‘I’m sure we can find you one. Male or female?’ And he didn’t get it at all. Ridiculous old fool.

  Telling Mam that her husband had left her for his secretary was literally the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my entire life. It would have been easier to tell her he’d died.

  But she took it well – too well. She just said, ‘I see.’ Sounding very reasonable. ‘A girlfriend, you say? Stick on Buffy there.’

  So, mad as it sounds, we sat in front of Buffy, not seeing a thing, well I didn’t anyway, then, without warning, she switched off the telly, and said, ‘You know, I think I’d like to speak to him.’

  Back out to the phone and this time she rang him and got him at his desk, and they had what sounded like a calm conversation – very: ‘Yes, Gemma did tell me, but I thought she might have got it wrong. Uh-huh, she didn’t Uh-huh, yes… Colette… you’re in love with her… I see… I see. Yes, of course you deserve to be happy… nice apartment… well that’s nice. A nice apartment can be nice… solicitor’s letter… I see, yes, I’ll look out for it, well, bye for now.’

  And when she hung up she said, ‘He has a girlfriend.’ Like it was news.

  Back she went into the kitchen, me following. ‘A girlfriend. Noel Hogan has a girlfriend. He’s going to live with her in her nice apartment.’

  Then she opens a press, takes out a plate, says, ‘My husband of thirty-five years has a girlfriend,’ and casually frisbeed the plate at the wall, where it smashed into smithereens. Then another, then one more. She was picking up speed, the plates were twirling faster and the gaps between me having to duck to avoid the explosion of splinters were getting shorter.

  While she was just flinging the ordinary blue and white kitchen crockery, I wasn’t too bothered. I thought she was only doing what was expected of her. But when she went into the sitting room, picked up one of her bone-china ballerinas – you know them, awful-looking yokes, but she loves them – and, after only the tiniest hesitation, fecked it at the window, then I was bothered.

  ‘I’m going to drive over there and kill him,’ she growled, sounding like she was possessed. And only that

  she can’t drive,

  Dad had taken the car and

  she wouldn’t be seen dead in my car because it’s too ‘showy’

  I’m certain she’d have done it.

  When she realized she couldn’t go anywhere, she began pulling at her clothes – ‘renting’ them, perhaps? I kept trying to grab her hands and stop her, but she was much, much too strong for me. By then I was very scared. She was way out of control and I hadn’t a clue what to do. Who could I ring? Ironically enough my first thought was of Dad, especially as it was his fault. In the end I rang Cody. Naturally I didn’t expect any sympathy, but I hoped for some practical advice. He answered in non-work mode, i.e. as camp as a row of cerise tents with marabou feather trimming. ‘A shock? Do tell.’

  ‘My dad’s left her. What should I do?’

  ‘Oh dear. Is that her I hear?’

  ‘What? The shrieking? Yes.’

  ‘Is she…? Is that the sound of Aynsley shepherdesses breaking?’

  I took a quick look. ‘Belleek creamers. Close enough. What should I do?’

  ‘Hide the good china.’ When it became clear that I wouldn’t play ball, he said – kindly for him, ‘Call the medics, dear.’

  Round here it’s harder to get a doctor to make a house call than it is to eat only one cashew nut. (Absolutely impossible, as we both well know.) I rang and got Mrs Foy, Dr Bailey’s foul-tempered receptionist – did I ever tell you about her? She’s worked for him since before the flood and always acts like a request for an appointment is a gross imposition on his time. But I managed to convince the old sourball that this was an emergency; the sounds of Mam in hysterics in the background may have helped, of course.

  So half an hour later Dr Bailey shows up in his golf clothes and – get this – gives Mam a shot. I thought it was only people who lived in bodice-ripper-land who got given shots by doctors when they became a bit overwrought. Whatever they put in them must be good gear because before our eyes Mam stopped gasping and sagged feebly onto her bed.

  ‘Any more of them?’ I asked and the doc goes, ‘Ahaha! So what happened?’

  ‘My father has left us for his secretary.’

  I expected the good doctor to act shocked, but you know what? Something like guilt skipped across his face and I’m not joking, I could have sworn the word ‘Viagra’ crackled in the air, like a blue lightning flash. Dad’s been to see him recently, I’d put money on it.

  He couldn’t get away fast enough. ‘Put her to bed,’ he sez. ‘Don’t leave her on her own. If she wakes up…’ He shook two pills onto his hand and handed them over. ‘Give her the two. Emergency only.’ Then he scribbled a prescription for tranks and hot-footed it back to the thirteenth hole. His spiky shoes left little clumps of grass on the hall carpet.

  I helped Mam into bed – she hadn’t got dressed, so there was no undressing to be done – pulled the curtains then lay beside her, on top of the eiderdown. I was in my Nicole Farhi suit and even though I hadn’t got it in the sale and even though I knew I was going to get feathers all over it, I didn’t care. That’s how freaked out I was.

  It was all way too weird. You know what it’s like round here, no one leaves their wives. People get married and stay married for a hundred and seventy years. Even if they hate each other. Not that Mam and Dad ever seemed to hate each other, not at all. They were just… you know… married.

  I paused and deleted that last paragraph. Susan’s mother had died when Susan was two and her dad got married again when Susan was twenty. The marriage had broken up about three years ago and even though Carol wasn’t her mother and Susan hadn’t been living at home when it all started to go wrong, she was still upset about it.

  Anyway, so I’m thrun on the bed in my good suit and then the church bells start ringing the midday Angelus: I was lying in a darkened room with a sedated parent by my side and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. This gave me a bad bout of the fear so I rang work, just to feel I wasn’t the only person in the world. Andrea let it slip that the screens had never turned up for the chiropractors’ conference, but insisted it was fine. Of course it wasn’t fine – how could the chiropractors look at their pictures of gammy spines without screens?

  But who cares, I felt. In fairness, something always goes wrong at a conference, no matter how much preparation I do, and at least the flowers for the gala dinner centrepieces had arrived. (We were wrapping wire around hollyhocks and other lanky ones and kind of bending them to make them look like spines. Andrea’s idea – she’s really come on a lot.)

  Poor Andrea was dying to know what was up with Dad, if he’d had a heart attack or a stroke or what but, you know yourself, etiquette dictates that you can’t ask outright. I just said he was OK, but she wouldn’t let it go.

  ‘Stable?’ she asks.

  ‘Stable? He’s certainly not acting it.’

  I got off the phone fast, but I’ve a problem here. Everyone at work thinks Dad’s at death’s door, but how on earth can I tell them the truth – that all that was wrong was that he’d got himself a girlfriend?

  Not only is it exceptionally embarrassing, but loads of them have met Dad, so they’re just not going to believe me. In fact, even though Dad himself has told, me that he has a girlfriend, I’ve stopped believing it too. He just isn’t the type. Even his name is wrong, don’t you think? Ladies and gentlemen, look into your hearts and ask yourselves, is Noel Hogan the name of a man who lea
ves his wife for a woman young enough to be his daughter? Should not his name be Johnny Chancer or Steve Gleam? Instead I give it to you, esteemed ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that Noel Hogan is the name of a man who reads John Grishams, who does up a family tree going back four generations, a man whose hero is not Arnie or Rambo, but Inspector Morse; in other words, ladies and gentlemen, a man who would never give his wife and daughter a moment’s worry.

  Anyway… After ages more of lying on the bed, I decided I’d better clean up the broken china and I swear to God, you’d want to have seen the kitchen; the smashed plates had gone everywhere – into the butter, floating in the milk jug. There was a four-inch long piece sticking out of a Busy Lizzie pot, it looked like modern arse.

  And as for the sitting room where it was ornaments which’d bitten the dust… Obviously some of them were so horrible it was a good thing, but I felt really sorry for the poor little ballerina – her dancing days were over.

  Then I went back and lay on the bed beside Mam who was doing these cute little whistley snores, but I stayed on top of the covers. There were some crappy magazines on the floor on her side, and I stayed there for the rest of the day, reading them.

  Now, Susan, from here on in, I’m a bit worried about my behaviour – the heating clicked off at eleven and the room got cold but I wouldn’t get under the covers. I think I felt that as long as I wasn’t actually in bed, I was only keeping her company, but the minute I got in it meant that Dad wasn’t coming home. Anyway I dozed off and when I woke up I was so cold I couldn’t feel my skin; like when I poked my arm with my finger, I could see the indent but felt nothing. It was quite entertaining, actually, a bit like being dead. I did it a good few times then put on Mam’s coat – no point getting hypothermia just cos Dad had gone a bit loola – but I still wouldn’t get into the bed. The next time I awoke the bloody sun had come up and I was annoyed with myself. While it was still night-time, there was hope that Dad would come home, and if I’d stayed awake and on guard, morning would never have come. Mad, I know, but that’s how I felt.