‘Yes,’ Lara said, glancing apologetically at Eliza. ‘But – you know. These things happen sometimes, regardless.’
These things happen, he repeated to himself in a daze. What a coy way to describe such a bolt from the blue: a real-life daughter happening, right before his eyes. His daughter.
And then a surge of injustice broke through his incredulity, hot and sour, as a whole new question occurred to him. ‘Why are you only telling me this now?’ he asked. He’d had a child all this time and nobody had thought to tell him? ‘How come this is the first I’ve heard of it?’
‘I did try!’ Lara burst out defensively. Her chin jerked upwards, flashing him straight back to a late-night, summer Manhattan street; remembering her feistiness, how he’d teased her for it, how he’d been so completely drawn to her from the very first moment. It seemed impossible to reconcile how she’d been back then with who she was now. ‘I called you. Several times. But—’
The memories were flooding back, thick and fast. ‘I’m sorry I never turned up for our date,’ he said, as she broke off. ‘But I did leave a message for you. Didn’t you get it?’
Her face changed. She looked aghast momentarily, then guarded. ‘No,’ she said after a moment. ‘I didn’t get any message. Although I did track down your hostel, only to be told you’d left, before we were even supposed to meet!’
He couldn’t keep up with this. He couldn’t think straight. They seemed to have veered away from the main headline – that hello, he had a daughter! – to instead be nitpicking about messages and phone calls. Plus, more pertinently, he realised, Kirsten was due to walk in at any moment and he wasn’t remotely prepared for how that conversation might play out. Jesus Christ. ‘I . . .’ Words failed him. The two women were still standing there, looming over him, and he sought refuge in basic manners so as to buy himself a moment’s breathing space. ‘Um. Do you want to sit down?’
They sat down. ‘This must be a bit of a shock,’ Lara mumbled; such a ludicrous understatement that he almost wanted to laugh. ‘Us coming here today was . . .’ She shot a look at Eliza. ‘Something of an impulse trip to find you.’
‘An impulse trip?’ he repeated with an edge of anger in his voice. He couldn’t help it bubbling up through him: the sheer wrongness of his apparently having had a daughter all this time, who he was only now meeting. How could anyone think that was right or fair? ‘What, after eighteen, nineteen years?’
Eliza was looking at him from under her thick black lashes. ‘I only found out myself yesterday,’ she said. ‘That you even existed, I mean. I’ve spent this whole time thinking my dad was a painter and decorator in Whitby who didn’t want to know me. When instead . . .’
‘I had no idea,’ he told her, desperate for her not to think badly of him, to lump him in with the Whitby painter. If Lara hadn’t got his message, she must have assumed he hadn’t bothered turning up for their date. God knows how she might have bad-mouthed him to Eliza. ‘If I’d known – if I’d had even a hint that you had been born, that you were my . . .’ He struggled to say it. ‘That you were my girl, I would have come to find you. I promise.’ He rubbed the side of his face, feeling completely ill-equipped for the emotional vocabulary required for this intense, startling conversation. He could still hardly believe it was happening. And now, of all times, five minutes before Kirsten was due to walk in for their marriage-reviving date. He knew she wanted things spicing up, but not this much, surely. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he confessed. ‘I’m a bit overwhelmed, to be honest.’ He glanced over at the pub door as it opened, his heart pounding in the horror of it being his wife, but thankfully it was a group of lads, rowdy and jubilant in anticipation of wetting the weekend’s head.
‘So how come you stood her up anyway?’ Eliza’s tone was accusatory, her expression judgemental. A pin badge on her jacket read ‘Fuck the Tories’; another was of a black cat with a speech bubble that said ‘MEOW’. Everything about her was utterly fascinating to Ben, as if she was a book he wanted to read cover to cover. Okay, so my daughter is left-wing and likes cats, he noted, before realising Eliza was still talking.
‘Mum, I mean. How come you just went off and never contacted her again? She probably would have tried a bit harder to get hold of you if you hadn’t gone and ditched her like that. Or if you’d bothered to call her back. We could have done this years ago.’ She eyeballed him, her gaze measuring and not particularly friendly. ‘So what was all that about?’
He flinched, not appreciating being cast as the villain of the piece – how could that be fair, when he’d been kept in the dark the whole time? If this was anyone’s fault, it was Lara’s! But he didn’t want to christen his new-found father-daughter relationship with an argument, either with Eliza or her mum. ‘Listen – I do really want to talk about this properly and explain what happened – on my side at least,’ he said, ‘but my wife’s about to walk in at any moment, so—’
‘Fine,’ said Lara quickly, as if glad of a reason to leave.
‘Not really,’ countered Eliza, ‘seeing as we’ve come all the way from Scarborough to meet you.’
‘If you’d let me know beforehand though,’ he began helplessly, before losing his cool once more and adding, ‘say, in the last eighteen years or so, we could have arranged a more convenient time to—’
‘Like I said, I tried that!’ Lara retaliated, eyes blazing. ‘And, unlike you, I did turn up at the Oyster Bar that evening but—’
‘Oh shit,’ he interrupted, no longer listening because the door had opened again and there was Kirsten walking in, her blonde hair shining bright around her shoulders as she looked around the pub and saw him. It was like being in a bad dream, except he was wide awake and pumped full of adrenalin. ‘You need to go,’ he blurted out shakily. ‘I can’t – I can’t do this now. Can we—?’ But he didn’t know what to suggest because Kirsten was weaving her way through the tables towards them, and his mind had become utterly, paralysingly blank. Bloody hell, here she was. Two worlds colliding. How was he going to navigate his way out of this? ‘Hi!’ he said with false cheer, standing up so abruptly the table shuddered and he had to make a grab for his pint glass. He went to kiss her cheek, resisting the sudden urge to hang on to her tight and stay there, eyes shut, until the world returned to normal once more.
‘Hi,’ she said, disentangling herself and eyeing Lara and Eliza with a quizzical air. ‘Making friends, are we?’
‘Oh! No. Just . . . um . . . just giving these two directions,’ he blustered, hoping to God they wouldn’t contradict him – or worse, reveal the truth. ‘Um. Yeah. So . . . it’s probably easier if I show you from the doorway,’ he improvised to them, ‘and then I can point out the road you need.’ He was barely aware of the words coming from his mouth in his desperation to break up the party but thankfully, after a split second’s hesitation, Lara and Eliza rose from their seats. ‘Back in a minute, Kirst,’ he said, ushering them towards the exit, his heart hammering so frenziedly he half expected it to come through his chest. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he mumbled, shoulders collapsing as they went out the door. ‘That’s my wife. I can’t— I need to— Sorry.’