Emily opens Jayne’s door. She’s not there, though her stuff is. Her bag is wide open on the floor and her stuff has been tossed around everywhere. It looks as if the room has been ransacked, and the bed hasn’t been slept in.
Emily moves to Ruth’s door and, affecting more bravery than she feels, goes to knock on it, though her fingers retract from it the first time she tries. But she gathers her courage, closes her fist, raps sharply and opens the door without waiting for a reply.
“Breakfast’s ready!” I call. Imogen hasn’t emerged from her bedroom yet.
I assume she’s keen to come and see what I’ve made for her but is still suffering the aftereffects of the drug. I believe it can leave you feeling fatigued and strange for some hours after you come around. But I’m here to help her. If she’ll eat something, that’ll be a start.
I shouldn’t have slipped her anything, I know. But I was exhausted. And if you discover someone has lied to you, when you’ve been doing everything possible in your power to support them, when you’ve bust a gut, and then you overhear that they’re going to try to deceive you again—to sneak out of my house for the night without telling me!—then I don’t think anyone would blame you for a little loss of patience.
So, I drugged her after I got rid of Jemma. Jemma wasn’t happy when I asked her politely to leave, but I slipped her some cash and told her to humor me, just this once. I only gave Imogen a couple of roofies. I hope she doesn’t suspect it. She is, after all, a very intelligent young woman and I’m proud of that.
After waiting for a while, watching the eggs go cold on the plate, where I’ve arranged them so nicely, I decide to take them to her. Knocking softly at her door again excites me, just as I felt like a real parent when I put her to bed last night and tucked her up. Providing food for someone is similarly intimate. It’s how you show people you love them.
Edie said that to me once, when we were watching Ruth cook. I’ve never forgotten it.
Imogen croaks a “come in” as I’m opening the door. She doesn’t look much more awake than earlier. Her tea is untouched, which annoys me, but I don’t say anything.
I move the mug aside and put the plate beside it on the bedside table, but she doesn’t look at it right away because she’s curled up facing the wall, and the back of her neck looks so delicate.
“Eggs,” I say. “For you.”
When she turns toward me her face is her mother’s. Her eyesshards that flash as they catch a shaft of sunlight penetrating a gap in the curtains.
“I hate eggs,” she says. “Sorry.”
The stab of irritation I feel is surprisingly strong. Why, at every turn, is she so determined to prevent me caring for her the way I want to? It makes me feel a little shaky because I’ve longed all my life for a daughter.
Everyone says it: the daddy-daughter bond is special. I never wanted a son because I watched my own father dote on my sister and felt the back of his hand across my cheek when I pissed him off. I’m afraid of repeating the cycle. My very own daughter is what I yearn for. I want her to look at me the same way my sister gazed at my dad. Adoringly.
I listened to Rob show off about his relationship with Imogen for years. My girl, he would say fondly, not understanding that every time he said it in the last year, since I’ve known that she couldn’t be his, the heinous part of me found it harder to stay hidden. God, the jealousy I felt.
I discovered that Rob wasn’t Imogen’s father by accident. He was messaging Edie and I oversaw it. “I’m only a little bit sorry that we couldn’t have a child together because I love Imogen just as much as if she was mine. And the upside is that at least I’ll never need a vasectomy,” he wrote. Laughing emoji attached. She sent one back, along with an emoji blowing a kiss and a heart emoji. They got under my skin.
I couldn’t question him about it because their messages were private, and I felt it wouldn’t be appropriate anyway if they’d kept it a secret this long.
But my mind began to race, wondering who Imogen’s father is.
I made calculations, put two and two together.
The answer was obvious and startling. It’s me.
And to think, Rob never even knew it. Not even at the end.I was tempted to tell him, but I never got the chance. The ocean will have to whisper it into his barnacled ears on my behalf.
But I think the dead stay with us, somehow, don’t you? So, he knows now.
This is partly why I plan to be the perfect parent to Imogen. Not in memory of Rob, who doesn’t deserve it because he had Imogen to himself for too long, but for Edie. It’s what she would want. And it’s what I want, too.
“Don’t you even feel like trying the eggs?” I ask. My words don’t come out quite as casually as I’d have liked them to. I might have sounded a little testy but it’s only because I care so much.
It gets her attention. She rolls onto her back and stares at me.
“Okay,” she says, her voice small. She arranges pillows to prop herself up. I perch on the end of her bed.
I know it’ll be a tremendous shock for her to learn that I’m her real father. I anticipate denial, anger, grief, and eventually, hopefully, joy.
As I sit, she draws her feet up, away from me, even though there’s no need to. She won’t do that when she knows who we really are to one another.
“I was thinking we could do something nice today,” I say. “How about a walk?”
