‘So – that was it, was it?’ Eliza asked, eyes flinty. ‘You thought, “Oh well, I’ll just let Eliza think that Steve never loved her enough to want to see her again”? You didn’t think you should try and tell me any of this? Or track down my real dad?’
‘I did try to find him,’ Lara said defensively. This was back before everyone was on social media, when it wasn’t so easy to hunt down a lost contact, but she’d set about it the old-school way at Scarborough Library: working through the phone books of Glasgow, Cambridge and London, three cities where she knew Ben to have lived, jotting down lists and numbers of McManuses. She had called and discounted all of the Glasgow listings before reaching a number in Cambridge that seemed to be the right one. But even then, having phoned twice and left him a message, he had never called her back.
The sting of rejection had hit her all over again as his silence stretched from a day to a week to months on end. She should have known he wouldn’t bother! It wasn’t as if he’d treated her very well in the first place. ‘Sod him then,’ her mum had said, shaking her head with contempt when Lara confided in her what had happened. ‘He sounds a waste of space – not good enough for you or Eliza. You don’t need him. Men make everything more complicated, take it from me!’
‘You didn’t try that hard, obviously,’ Eliza said now, glowering. ‘Seeing as it took me about two seconds to google him last night.’ She got to her feet, pushing the chair back so roughly it wobbled on its back legs. ‘I can’t be bothered to listen to this any more. I’m off.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lara cried, feeling wretchedly as if she was the worst mother ever. ‘We’ll talk tonight, yeah? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Okay?’
The crash of the front door was her only answer and she slumped back in her chair. Whatever Eliza might think now, Lara had always intended to tell her the truth one day. The thing was, as the years rolled on, it had become increasingly onerous to tackle the revelation, and she’d found herself repeatedly kicking it ahead into the long grass, continuing to hide behind the lie that Steve was Eliza’s father. Initially, she’d convinced herself that Eliza was too young to know about the facts of life, then too unworldly to be told of the uncertainties of love and conception, then at too awkward an age to want to hear anything relating to her mum having sex, ever. Even when Eliza had turned eighteen at the end of March, Lara had bottled it. She was scared, she could see now, in hindsight. Scared of trying to contact Ben again, scared of being rebuffed. Scared that she had made wrong decision after wrong decision, in fact. And, like it or not, it was these scared feelings that had led to her keeping men at a safe distance for all the years since. She’d proved twice over that her instincts were terrible when it came to love and romance. With Eliza as her priority now, there was no way she would willingly put herself in such a vulnerable situation again.
And so Lara had said nothing – but look how that had backfired. Now the situation felt way worse than if she’d simply been straight about the facts from the start. Would Eliza ever forgive her? How could Lara rebuild foundations of trust between them when, in her daughter’s eyes, she’d let her down so badly?
During driving lessons, Lara’s phone was always switched to ‘Do Not Disturb’, with the only exceptions being the numbers of Eliza and her school, so when it started ringing two minutes after she’d picked up a new student, Billie, for a trial lesson, Lara’s immediate reaction was one of alarm. The car was stationary at the time, parked up outside Billie’s college on Filey Road, with Lara midway through her traditional opening spiel about how a car engine worked. ‘I’m really sorry, could you excuse me a moment?’ she said, breaking off to grab her phone. Eliza’s name was on the screen: Eliza, who knew not to contact her unless it was an absolute house-burning-down emergency. What on earth could be wrong? ‘I’m going to have to answer this.’
‘Sure,’ said Billie, shrugging her shoulders. She had a sleepy sort of expression with wide-set eyes and a soft voice, and a wrist full of clinking silver bracelets.
Lara fumbled to answer the call. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Are you all right, love?’
There was a sniff from the other end but no further reply, and Lara pressed the phone hard against her ear, panic rising. ‘Eliza? Can you hear me?’
‘Yeah. I’m here. Er.’ There was a pause, so long Lara thought the signal must have dropped out, until Eliza’s voice came again, low and reluctant. ‘Mum . . . can you do me a favour?’ she asked. ‘Don’t be mad but . . . something’s happened.’
Travel is well-starred today, Eliza’s horoscope had read that morning. Go for it! Your journey starts right here, right now. Yeah, whatever, she’d thought, as she dragged herself out of bed. How was she meant to do that then? Cambridge was a lot further away than Whitby; too far to be able to hop on a couple of buses with the excuse of a fake migraine.
‘I wish I could get out of here,’ she sighed to her friends Bo and Saskia, during breaktime that morning, when they met as usual in their favourite corner of the common room. ‘If I had a car, I’d take off in a second. I found out something pretty massive last night.’
And then out came the whole saga, punctuated by Saskia’s dramatic gasps and frequent interjections (she was an Aquarius; she loved the drama). Bo, meanwhile, merely arched an eyebrow at the story’s end. ‘I can get you a car,’ she said.
It had been that easy. Unbelievably easy. Bo’s stepbrother Tyrone had a car and let Bo drive it all the time. He wouldn’t mind Eliza borrowing it, she reckoned – he was out of work at the moment and spent all day on the sofa playing Xbox games; it wasn’t like he needed the car to go anywhere.
‘Oh my God,’ Eliza said. ‘Are you sure? When do you think I might be able to borrow it?’
Bo responded by getting to her feet and hitching her bag on her shoulder. ‘Now?’
Bo was a really fun person to hang out with – she was a Scorpio: daring, unpredictable and smart. In the past, the only downside Eliza had ever felt about their friendship was that Bo always had such bold, startling ideas, Eliza often felt unimaginative, and even a bit cowardly, in comparison. Last term, for instance, Bo had thought nothing of hacking into the school computer system and upgrading her friends’ school reports. She’d brought in hash brownies for her unwitting politics class when it was her turn at cake week, and was confident in her sexuality, switching between boyfriends and girlfriends with apparent ease in a way that virginal, uncertain Eliza deeply envied. (Will I ever have sex with anyone? was one of the most perennially urgent questions in her head, second only to Who am I? right now.)
Today, on this, she would be as daring as Bo, she decided. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Suits me. Yes!’
Twenty minutes later, Eliza was sitting behind the steering wheel of Tyrone’s car, simple as that. ‘You’re sure he won’t mind?’ she asked again through the open window. Doubts were starting to edge into her head now that the initial adrenalin pump of Bo’s offer was draining away. She’d already missed lessons yesterday and there was no way she’d be back in time for double biology this afternoon. More than that, she was about to drive off in her friend’s brother’s car without even getting his permission. This was definitely not typical Eliza behaviour. But then again, maybe her real dad was a lifelong rebel and thrill-seeker, and his genes were finally making themselves known in her. The thought gave her a fillip of renewed bravery.