‘Not really. It’s Santa’s home, he just lets me stay there for the rest of the year as he doesn’t need it until December. So I can’t complain about it when he does come back. And I get to stay upstairs while Santa moves in downstairs so it’s not like I have no place to stay.’
‘You can always stay with us,’ Zara said, simply.
‘What?’ Quinn said.
‘Harley’s mum’s boyfriend has just moved in with them and, when I asked why, Harley said it’s because they love each other. You two love each other so you should move in.’
‘It’s… not quite so simple as that,’ Quinn said, awkwardly, while Alex had no words at all. Immy snorted with suppressed laughter.
‘Harley says it’s like having a second dad,’ Zara wenton. ‘Only better because her real dad is mean to her mum and Harley doesn’t like it. She says Jake is nice and plays with her and sometimes brings her toys and gives her hugs. And I said my dad was mean to my mum too but now he isn’t here and you could be my dad, because you’re nicer.’
Alex let out a little gasp. ‘What do you mean, your dad was mean to me?’
She had tried to shield Zara from Liam’s nastiness as much as she could, but she couldn’t exactly shut Zara in her room whenever he was in a nasty mood because that would have meant her being in her room for the last eighteen months of Liam’s life. She had tried to tell herself that Zara, at three and four years old, was too young to understand, but clearly not.
Zara nodded. ‘He made you cry. I remember that. He made you cry a lot. Quinn never makes you cry.’
Alex bit her lip. She had no recollection of crying in front of her daughter. She always tried to walk away from Liam when he got too nasty, and obviously took Zara with her, but she’d always tried to keep the tears at bay in front of Zara. It broke her heart that Zara had negative memories of her dad. Before his friend died Liam had been a wonderful father. She resolved to try and find some videos of him and Zara in happier times. But she had no idea how to address this.
Immy gave Alex a consoling stroke on the back. Alex knew she would never jump to Liam’s defence; her sister had despised the man ever since she’d found out what Alex had lived with for the last eighteen months ofhis life. Alex looked at her sister. She was pissed that not only had Liam made her cry but that Zara had seen it.
Quinn cleared his throat. ‘Your dad was a good man, but he got sick and that sickness made him do and say mean and nasty things. The man he was before he got sick would have hated that he made your mum cry – he loved you both very much.’
Alex smiled with love for him, he always knew the perfect thing to say. Immy was clearly biting her lip to disagree that Liam was a good man but her sister knew that Alex never wanted to speak ill of Liam in front of Zara, regardless of his appalling behaviour.
Zara was quiet for a while. ‘I don’t really remember him.’
‘We can talk about him any time you want to,’ Alex said. ‘And I have lots of photos and videos of the three of us together, we can look at them too.’
‘And I have many stories of what we got up to when we were kids,’ Quinn said. ‘You just need to ask and I’ll bore you with them for hours. Nanny will have plenty of funny stories about him too.’
‘OK, maybe I’d like to look at some videos of him some time.’
‘Just say the word,’ Alex said, even though she knew watching those videos would hurt because they had been happy and Liam had thrown all that away so easily.
‘But I’d still like a new dad,’ Zara went on. ‘I haven’t had one for a long time. And if you two love each other why can’t Quinn move in like Jake did?’
‘Quinn is very special to us,’ Alex said carefully. ‘Andthere will be a time in the future when he will move in with us. Or we’ll move in with him but—’
‘In Santa’s house?’ Zara almost screamed with excitement.
‘Well we might, we haven’t talked about it,’ Alex said, feeling like they were going off topic quite spectacularly.
‘Why haven’t we talked about it?’
‘It has to be the right time,’ Quinn said.
‘No it doesn’t, we can talk about it anytime, we could talk about it now,’ Zara said. ‘Can we move into Santa’s house, Mum, can we?’
‘Why don’t we go and have a closer look at the forest trail and the house,’ Immy said, helpfully. She held out a hand for Zara and, surprisingly, she took it. They walked, or in Zara’s case bounced, towards the house, leaving Quinn and Alex alone.
‘And there was I thinking that if Zara knew about us it might be easier than trying to sneak around,’ Alex said. ‘But there was nothing easy about that.’
Quinn was looking serious. ‘She’s bound to compare herself to other families, especially as most of her friends all have dads and she doesn’t.’
‘True. She’s never said anything to me before about wanting a new dad. I wonder if that’s because she always got what she needed in that regard from you.’
‘I’ve done what I can but her upbringing is all down to you, and probably Immy,’ Quinn said. ‘You’ve done the job of a mum and a dad. She’s brilliant, sensible, funny, clever and all of that is down to you.’
