“Carol and I had been together over a year, and—it wasn’t really serious, but it was getting that way, and…” Marv shakes his head. “Aye, I was just young and bloody stupid, that’s what I was.”
We walk for a while, and I ask him about his family. He has Carol. They struggled to conceive for years, but he tells me they had a daughter eventually, and that is when I stop in the street, feet frozen to the spot. “I have a sister,” I say. “A half sister. I actually have a—” I can’t speak.
“Yes,” says Marv, his eyes shining. “Cadie. She’s eighteen. At university.”
“Studying?”
“Law.”
I blow out a breath. “God. Wow,” I say, voice breaking. “I have a sister who is studying law at university.”
Marv chuckles.
We walk down to the seafront, ambling along slowly, past the sand, and moored up paddleboats on the beach, and shuttered ice cream kiosks, their stickered menus, discolored and sun-bleached.
“I remember,” I tell him, “that you’d pick me up and we’d walk like this, but I wasn’t allowed to mention it to Mum, or it’d make her jealous she’d missed it. That’s what Den would tell me. And I only ever wanted to keep her happy.”
“I knew about you, Emmie,” he says. “I wanted immediately to be involved, to be a father to you. But Katherine—your mother—she shut me out. As soon as I told her about Carol and that it was a mistake, she shut me out completely. I came to find you when I knew you’d been born. News traveled fast in that pub. Not there anymore. The George it was called. And she refused to let me in. I tried all the time, I really did. And one day, Den answered the door.” He smiles when he mentions Den, his eyes cloudy, and I feel my heart lift at the sound of his name coming from someone else’s lips. “He let me in. He didn’t agree with what your mother was doing. And as much as he loved her, he also loved you. He felt you needed your father, and mostly, I think he felt I should know you too. He came on every outing, though, the man. Hovering in the background, keeping an eye on you…”
“He left us,” I say, and my throat swells as I hear the words.
“No, darling,” says Marv. “He left your mum. Not you.”
“But he never came back to see me. Neither did you.”
“He tried,” Marv says pleadingly. “He really did. But what right did he have? An ex of your mum’s wasn’t exactly going to get him access, was it, to a seven-, eight-year-old girl who wasn’t his own?”
I can feel it now, anger rumbling beneath the surface of my skin. Mum. Mum stopped me being loved. She made me lonely. I could have had Den in my life. I could have had a father in my life. But instead I had nobody. I had her, but I didn’t, not really. She left. Every month she’d leave for a weekend, and as I got older, turned fourteen, then fifteen, they increased, until weeks would go by until I’d see her again. Off touring. Off pretending as though she didn’t have a child that needed her at home. I had Georgia, too, of course, and her family. I had him. Robert. The person I held as Dream Father in my mind. I shudder and gulp down tears and anger about it all, and I feel Marv’s hand touch my arm. When I don’t move, he moves, hesitantly, to put his arm around me, and we stand looking out to sea for a while. I enjoy the weight of his arm. I enjoy the warmth. “My dad,” I want to say to passersby. “This is my dad.”
“Your mum never forgave me,” says Marv, “for never telling her about Carol. But it was a mistake. I messed up, aye, like all human beings do. I was a young lad, really. But that doesn’t mean you should be defined by that mistake for your whole life, Emmie.”
I nod, and I let those words stay there, in the air, to sink into me slowly. “I know,” I say. “I know.”
“And I’d like to see you,” he says. “I know I’ve missed a lot, but… I’d like to build… something.”
“Me too,” I say.
“But you need to give me some time, Emmie. I need to speak with Carol; with Cadie.”
I look to my side at him, spidery veins broken beneath the skin of his face, lips purply, quivering ever so slightly, and I nod. “Time,” I say. “Okay. I understand.”
We say nothing more for a while, walking slowly, side by side to the Clarice. I know, for the first time in my whole life, that I am late, but I don’t care.
At the foot of the stairs of the Clarice’s entrance, I give Marv my phone number, and he says he will call me.
“Fancy place, this, isn’t it?” He looks up at the grand entrance of the hotel, his eyes squinting in the autumnal sun. “They treat you well?”
“They do. Money isn’t great but…”
“They treat you well.” He smiles.
“Exactly.”
“Well, that’s all that matters.”
Marv puts his arms around me again when we say goodbye, his body warm under the shirt and thick fleece he wears, and he pats my back twice with his hand.
When I get into the Clarice, Fox doesn’t mention the fact I am ten minutes late, and instead, puts his arm around me and leads me outside. “Nonsmoking fag break before we do anything, Ms. Emmie Blue. You have to hear about Rosie’s date. You’ll be laughing for the next seven centuries.”
And as I stand listening to Rosie’s horror story of a date gone bad, and Fox shoots me knowing looks over his cigarette, and Rosie holds on to my arm, laughter doubling her over, I think of Marv. My dad. And I realize I don’t feel lonely. In this moment, the empty loneliness that has always followed me around like a chasm, ready to eat me whole, is simply not there.
I feel loved.
I have never seen Louise laugh as much as she is laughing tonight. Her cheeks are red and her eyes are slits and she keeps holding her chest, as if it’s hurting her too much. She’s eaten really well, too, and I only say that because the last couple of weeks I have noticed that half of the sandwiches I make her end up in the food waste box, curling at the edges, and the soup she makes herself sits mostly uneaten in a bowl, the foil never removed. She says her appetite suffers some days, but other times she’s ravenous. This condition she has—one she refuses to talk about really—is erratic with its symptoms. Good days and bad days.
Eliot, beside me, holds the bowing aluminum case of cheesecake, its creamy topping slopped across the base, and rogue biscuit crumbs, rolling. “More for you, Louise?”
Louise shakes her head. “Absolutely not. But thank you.”
“I might have to,” he says, looking at me. “How about you? It was bangin’, wasn’t it?”
“Bangin’,” I repeat.
“What?” he laughs.
“Nothing.” I smile. “Just bangin’. Haven’t heard that in a while. And yes. Do it. Ladle me up.”
Eliot laughs and scoops us both a messy spoonful of cheesecake, then pours on more cream than I would have poured myself. He hands me the bowl with a smile.
“Gosh, I miss being your age,” says Louise, opposite us, across the oil-clothed table. “Being young. Being able to eat whatever I wanted without being up half the night with a box of antacids. Being, oh, I don’t know.” She looks at me, her index finger and thumb pinching the stem of her wineglass. “Young and beautiful.”