I slide into the passenger seat. The car smells strongly of cigarettes and sharp, minty air freshener. It’s so powerful, so overwhelmingly familiar, that I’m instantly nine years old again, in the back seat of our Volvo, watching the road signs fly past as Mum and Dad hiss at each other up front.
This car smells of him. How can you recognise someone’s smell, but still feel like they’re a total stranger?
He coughs roughly into his fist, and then sniffs. ‘Ben.’ He blinks at me and shakes his head. ‘Jesus Christ. Look at you. You … you’ve changed.’ He gives a quiet, unhappy laugh. ‘Sorry, that’s …’ He tails off and turns his head to look straight ahead through the windscreen. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he mutters.
If he’s shocked by my appearance, I’m just as surprised at how different he looks.
Whenever I’ve seen his photo in magazines, he’s always been clean-shaven and smartly dressed. Right now, though, he’s sporting a greyish-black stubbly beard and a ragged-looking woolly jumper and jeans. His hair is much greyer, too, and he seems thinner, the skin hanging more loosely around his neck. He looks about a million miles from the grinning, confident world-beater I remember as a kid. He just seems … tired. Defeated.
The radio is burbling quietly between us, and he fiddles with it to switch it off. ‘I didn’t know whether to come in … whether I’d be welcome,’ he mumbles. I can hear the self-pity in his voice. ‘Christ, Ben. I’m so sorry.’
He looks round at me and I have the sudden urge to say: Sorry for what? Sorry for Mum dying? Sorry for leaving us? Sorry for never once making an effort to be a proper father?
But then that old, awkward formality I felt around him as a kid creeps back in. It’s like I’m twelve again, round at his and Clara’s flat, sensing instinctively that I shouldn’t rock the boat or cause any trouble. Otherwise he might not invite me back.
So I just shrug and mutter, ‘That’s OK.’
He stares down at his hands on his knees. ‘I just got in the car this morning and started driving,’ he says. ‘I was going to come into the church, honestly I was. But then I got here, and I …’ He flaps a hand aimlessly. ‘I couldn’t. I don’t really know why I’m even here,’ he adds. ‘It still doesn’t seem real, all this. I’m supposed to be in New York right now, for the show. We’ve had to push the press night back and everything.’
Anger pulses through me, and I suddenly want to rip through that old, suffocating formality. I suddenly very much want to rock the boat. I look him straight in the eye, and before I lose my nerve, I say, ‘No one asked you to be here.’
His mouth hangs half open for a second, and then he nods, scratching at his stubble.
‘You’ve got every right to be upset,’ he says finally. ‘To be angry at me.’
‘I’m angry because my mum’s gone,’ I say, feeling my vocal cords start to constrict and my voice to crack.
‘You know, she meant something to me too, Ben,’ he says. ‘We were married eleven years. She was a big part of my life.’ And the earnest, self-pitying, almost actorly expression on his face causes something inside me to snap.
‘This isn’t about you, Dad. This has nothing to do with you.’
The word ‘Dad’ dangles awkwardly in the air between us.
He picks up a squashed packet of Marlboro Reds from next to the gearstick. I notice his fingers are tinted yellow-brown at the tips. They’re shaking ever so slightly as he pulls a cigarette out. He turns it between his fingers, but doesn’t light it.
‘How are you coping?’ he asks. And then he shakes his head. ‘Stupid fucking question. Sorry.’ He closes his eyes and rubs the dark circles underneath them.
‘I’m OK,’ I tell him. ‘Well, no, I’m not OK. But I suppose I’m coping. Trying to.’
‘Good. That’s good. And … I heard you got married.’ He blinks. ‘How’s your wife doing?’
That nearly makes me laugh out loud. My own father doesn’t know my wife’s name. No reason why he should, I suppose.
‘Daphne,’ I say.
‘Daphne. How is she?’
‘She’s OK. She’s pretty much kept me together over the past couple of weeks. I don’t know what I’d do without her.’ Despite everything, the truth of that statement hits me like a train.
‘That’s good.’ Dad waves his lighter in front of me. ‘Do you mind if I …?’
‘No, go ahead.’
He rolls the window down and lights the cigarette, inhaling deeply.
‘How’s Bianca?’ I ask him. Bianca was the woman he was with the last time we spoke on the phone. After Clara, there was Lucy, then Fay, then Bianca, each one a few years younger than the last.
He sucks on the cigarette and rubs at his stubble again. ‘Bianca? Christ. No, that was years ago. Bianca’s long gone.’
I nod. ‘Right.’
He taps the cigarette ash out of the window and adds, ‘A bit of a nightmare in the end, Bianca. Complete headcase. Not sure what I was thinking.’
He shoots me a kind of roguish half-smile, which withers pretty quickly when I don’t return it. I have vague memories of him talking like this about all the women he dated after Mum. He would jokingly put them down; dismiss them as crazy or high-maintenance when the relationship failed. As a kid, I was impressed by it: it made him seem like this funny, swaggering man of the world.
It doesn’t seem in the least bit funny now.
‘No, I’m seeing someone else at the moment,’ he continues, taking another drag on his Malboro. ‘An actress from my play. Erin. She lives out in Brooklyn.’
I remember seeing the pictures of his play online: Erin was the lead role. Very attractive – and about my age, I reckon.
I watch him for a second, his cheeks hollowing as he sucks the cigarette. It strikes me suddenly that in the end, Mum was right. I only admired him because I didn’t really know him. All I had was this idea of him – successful, talented, dating a string of younger and younger women. But here, now, that idea doesn’t add up to anything. It certainly doesn’t seem to have made him happy. He just seems lonely and confused and messed up.
I don’t want to end up like that.
All these years, I’ve assumed it was predestined: my dad was a cheat, so I would end up cheating too. It almost became an excuse for what happened in Paris. I’d tell myself it wasn’t my fault; it was written into my genetic code. But that’s bullshit. I chose to sleep with Alice. And if I meet up with her for that drink in 2020, that’ll be my choice too. I can’t keep blaming all my mistakes and fears and failings on a father I don’t even know. I didn’t want to get married because I was afraid I’d turn into him. I wanted to have kids so that I could prove I wouldn’t. He’s coloured all my big life decisions, in one way or another. When really he’s a total stranger.
It makes me flinch with shame that I thought I needed him to look up to, when I had Mum all along: a thousand times kinder, funnier, better.
He takes a final drag on his cigarette and flicks the butt out of the window.
‘Where’s the wake?’ he asks.