“I was notlistening at the door,” she informs me loftily, “I was just gonna ask Aunt Sadie if RhiRhi can have an ice pop. But go off, I guess.”
Leo snorts, and Sadie bites down hard on her lip before disguising her mirth by chugging some more water. “Sure she can,” she says when she has better control. She peers a little closer at her daughter. “Is that eyeliner?”
“Uh-huh,” Rhiannon smiles, posing with her hands under her chin like a make-up artist on TikTok. “And lisp-stick. El put it on me with a little bwush.” I look over and smirk. Rhiannon’s palered hair has been put up in an elaborate ponytail with braids, and her eyes are lined in black to match her black lipstick.
“Goth princess,” Leo says, scooping her up for a cuddle. “Gimme a kiss right here.” He points to his cheek, and Rhi plants a smacker, leaving a thick black lip print. Leo howls like a cartoon wolf in appreciation, and she giggles. It takes me back to when Eleanor was that age, and all the hours Nat and I spent making her laugh with songs and dances and silly games that she probably won’t remember now. But I always will.
Speaking of Eleanor, she gives me a look like a laser, cutting into me to see everything Nat and I have kept away from her line of vision throughout her life. She ispissed, and I don’t quite understand why.
“Daddy, let me down,” Rhi grumbles, “Mummy said yes to ice pop.” She smacks the P with her smudged black lips. When Leo sets her down, she looks up at her heroine and tugs on her top. “El, Mummy said yes.”
After a beat, Eleanor looks down at her mini-me and plasters on a big smile. “She did,” she agrees in a bright voice, picking her up, “and now you need to decide what flavour. You can have orange, or you can have lemon, or you can have…” She continues to list each type, one by one, counting them on the fingers on one hand. El wants to work with children, and she’s always very conscious of how she communicates with her cousin. It’s something I really love to watch; she’d make a great teacher.
“Talk to her later,” Sadie advises me wisely. “She may need to be walked through everything. Just. You know. Don’t mention screwing people who aren’t her mother.”
I’ve never liked it when my daughter is subdued. It sets my parental Spidey Sense to tingling.What’s up? What does she need? How can I help her?Eleanor has never been shy about expressing herself, just like her aunt, but when she shuts down and says nothing…that’s when I know it’s serious.
So when we’re making dinner together, and she’s talking in monosyllables whenever I ask her anything, I wait until the lasagne is in the oven before speaking. “OK, let’s talk.” I pull a chair out for her at the small breakfast nook and then stand opposite. She doesn’t look at me as she sits.Shit, she’s really mad. “Go for it.”
She rolls her thumbs over each other, again and again, and then sighs. “Did you and Mum really stay apart because of me?”
Oh.
“Notbecauseof you,” I reply, “foryou.”
She rolls her eyes. “Splitting hairs much? I mean, if I’m really and seriously the only reason you two aren’t together, I want you to tell me.”
I think for a moment. “We wanted to make sure you had a stable and reliable family unit,” I finally settle on. “We were…god, wewereyour agewhen you were born.” I grimace as the full weight of that thought hits me. Looking at El now, there’s no way she should be a parent. She’s got so much she needs to do, to have thefreedomto do.
I don’t regret having her for a second. She’s the black hair dyed, eyeliner loving light of my world. But seeing her at the age I was when she arrived, it’s definitely made me think about things in a different way.
“Anyway,” I continue, shaking it off, “we were so young, and teenage love does not have the best track record for success. And it was more important to us that you had two parents who had a good co-parenting relationship than two parents in a romantic relationship. It…seemed too big of a risk.”
She considers this, nodding slowly as she does. I do the same thing when I’m thinking. “I think that’s a load of old shite.”
My eyebrows hit my hairline. “Pardon?”
I’m not talking about the minor curse word, and she knows it. “That sucks. It’s… Yeah, I have friends whose parents divorced and hate each other, and our situation is way better than that. I can’t take that away from you both. But…” She takes a shaky breath, swallowing down tears. I move to hug her, and for the first time ever, she holds a hand up to keep me away. And that, more than anything, brings home how much this has hurt her. “I’ve spent my whole life with basically the same thing as having divorced parents, and split my time between you both. But it might have been all for nothing.”
“What do you mean?” I ask her quietly, though I suspect I know what she’s going to say. It’ll be the same words that have kept me awake into the early hours of the morning for years now.
She huffs, and it almost turns into a growl. “You and Mum just…randomly decided you’d probably have broken up. Why? Cos, I mean, you had no way of knowing if that would have even happened. You might have stayed together and been happy, and… Jesus, Dad, I might havesiblingsby now.” She goes red, and quickly hides her face, resting her head on the work surface and muttering to herself.
Oh, shit, Princess, I know.
“It was what your mother thought was best at the time, and I said OK,” I mutter. “I’m not blaming her, or passing the buck. I’m just saying it was what she wanted, and I… I was young, and scared, and I just wanted to do whatever would make her happy. Whatever that looked like. Even if it made me…”Miserable.
She looks up, and I can see her eye make-up has smudged a little, traces of wetness at the corners. “But it’s not what you want now, right?”
I shake my head, unable to find the words but unwilling to conceal anything else from her.
“So go get her.” My daughter looks at me like I’m failing maths a five year old could do. “Tell her how you feel. Do it now. We can turn the oven off and go to the hospital, and - ”
“No.” I grin wryly. “One, there are way more romantic settings than hospitals - ”
“Erm, I beg your finest pardon?ER,Grey’s Anatomy?”
“And two… You know your mother. She may need a little persuading. If she even feels the same way, which you and I will have to accept if that’s not the case,” I finish firmly.
