Caro felt for him. Poor guy. Just when he thought that getting jilted was the most shocking thing that could happen to him tonight, he discovers his girlfriend has a secret sister.
‘I’m sorry about… I saw what happened,’ Caro said, momentarily suspending her rage to express sympathy. ‘But trust me, if she’s inherited this guy’s talent for lies and deceit, you probably had a lucky escape.’ She didn’t mean it to sound as harsh as it did, but she felt she had to stress the point for his sake.
The burning sense of indignant rage kicked back in as she turned to Jack. ‘At least you’re acknowledging me as your daughter. I should be thrilled. I wasn’t sure you’d remember,’ Caro bit, through gritted teeth, disproving her lifelong theory that she didn’t have much of a temper.
‘You have every right to be angry,’ Jack conceded.
‘I know,’ Caro countered. ‘I’m just struggling to decide what to be most angry about. The fact that you must have lied to Mum for all those years? Or that you walked away from me and never looked back? That you left Mum when she needed you?’ She felt Louise flinch at that one – it still seemed so unreal to her that Louise actually knew – but she went on… ‘The fact that you care so little for us that you never write, never call? Or that you clearly chose another family? Or how about just the fact that you had another family at all?’
‘You don’t understand…’
‘You’re damn right I don’t. Explain it to me,’ she challenged, eyes blazing.
‘And me,’ Cammy added.
Caro noticed Louise press a button on her phone, and Lila’s face popped up on screen, only for it to flick off again. She obviously wasn’t answering. Wow. Even now, when it was pure chaos, Louise was still only thinking about Lila. No wonder her half-sister had a gargantuan sense of carefree entitlement.
‘I was married when I met Louise,’ Jack said, to Cammy.
‘No,’ Caro snapped. ‘You don’t get to explain it to him first. Explain it to me. You at least owe me that.’
Jack sighed, the way he’d done a million times in her childhood. This was so weird. He was the man she’d grown up calling ‘Dad’, but he was like a distant, more polished version, with a side-twist of disinterest and disdain. ‘You’re right. I do. I was married to your mum when I met Louise,’ he said, repeating himself. ‘Louise and I wanted to be together, but I loved your mum too. You were a baby, only a few months old. I didn’t want to leave her, to leave you.’
This was actually happening. Her most outlandish speculations were coming to fruition. Her dad had another family. Holy. Fuck.
‘So I’d spend a week or two in Glasgow every month…’
‘Living with her?’ she gestured to Louise. She knew she was being obnoxious, and that was entirely out of character, but anger on behalf of her mother was controlling her side of the conversation, and, whatever way it was dressed up, Louise was the ‘other woman’.
‘Yes, living with Louise…’ he continued, ‘and then a week or two in Aberdeen, and the rest of the time visiting sites. Always on the road. Then Louise fell pregnant with Lila and suddenly I had two women, two children… So I carried on splitting my time between them. Somewhere along the line, that pattern became the normality, and living with two families did too.’
Caro turned to Louise. ‘And you were okay with this?’ she asked, unable to fathom that any woman would accept an arrangement like this.
She shook her head. ‘When I met him, he told me his relationship with your mum was over, that they’d split and he just stayed at your home in Aberdeen because he wanted to spend time with you.’
‘So he lied to you too?’
She saw Cammy’s head swivel to face Louise as they waited for an answer. ‘He did. I found out later. Your dad had a heart scare – one of many he’s had over the years – and your mum turned up at the hospital. That’s when I realised they were still married.’
‘So you met my mum?’
Louise shook her head. ‘Not really. When I realised who she was, I made some excuse that I worked for the hospital and I was in checking the room and then I got out of there. I was crushed.’
‘And yet, you forgave him?’
Louise nodded. ‘In a way, the thought of losing him proved to me how much I loved him.’
It took a moment for Caro to process Louise’s words. That was top-level delusion and gullibility right there. She couldn’t shirk the suspicion that he’d played on the whole ‘heart scare’ stuff to emotionally manipulate these women. He didn’t seem to be worried about his bloody heart now and if ever there was a chest-clutching shock, tonight had to be it.
‘And in another way, I respected that he wanted to be in your life too,’ Louise went on.
‘I think that was the last thing on his mind…’ Caro snapped, unable to control herself. ‘He couldn’t have been less interested in me.’ She didn’t care if it made her sound childish and petulant. This was home truths time.
Jack tried to interject. ‘Caro, that’s not true, I…’
Caro shut him right down. ‘Don’t you dare try to rewrite history, D—’ She broke off, unable to address him as ‘Dad’. He wasn’t a father. He was nothing. ‘You know, I honestly think all we were to you was somewhere to live when you were in Aberdeen. Did you ever love Mum? Ever care?’
‘He did, Caro,’ Louise stepped back in, and Caro realised that she was trying to play the peacemaker. She felt a stab of pain in her gut. Just like her mum had always done. Made excuses for him. Sanded off the edges of his failings. Minimised his disregard for his daughter. At first glance, it didn’t seem that her mum and Louise were similar, but perhaps they had some things – as well as a husband – in common after all. So it would seem her dad had a type.
