Over the years, I could never escape the feeling that all this was my fault. I wasn’t good enough somehow. It was as if he could already tell, even at thirteen, that I was a failure: that I wasn’t worth bothering with. It sounds stupid, I know. But whenever things went wrong later in life, it never felt like a surprise, because I knew deep down that I was destined to become a screw-up, just as my dad had predicted.
I’m about thirty feet from him now. As I step towards the passenger side of the car, he finally looks up and spots me.
His face twitches with shock, and I realise that he hasn’t simply been staring downwards – he’s been crying.
I stand there for a second outside the car, my heart pumping as we watch each other through the glass. And then he scrubs a hand across his eyes, and reaches over to open the door.
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
