“Seems like missing your mother didn’t do you too much harm. Do you mind if I ask how she died?”
“Cancer,” I say in a lighter voice than it warrants. But I know only too well what happens if I give the word the gravitas it usually commands. A soulful breakdown with a peppering of intrusive thoughts.
“That’s a hard one.”
I nod, picturing the hospital room as my mother struggled to hold on for just one more day. Then one day more. When I bring up the image, I can see the paisley skirt of the dress I was wearing. Smell the flowers resting on the sill. Hear the steady beep of the monitors as they tracked the physical vestiges of life.
My go-to platitude is about Mum’s legacy and how she shone so brightly it was no surprise she couldn’t shine for long, but my lips refuse to form the words, despite knowing them off by heart.
“A fracture of the fourth and fifth metacarpal. A green stick fracture of the forearm. A burst eardrum, that last was likely due to blunt force trauma.”
In the memory, I take my mother’s hand. The tinnitus is so loud I can’t hear the beep of the machines. I don’t know why I thought I could. And the flowers have turned, they smell like rotting meat.
Her knuckles are bruised. Her head is wrapped so thickly I can’t see anything of her hair. The hair that I hate. The tight dark ringlets exactly the same as mine.
Except I don’t hatethem. Not on her, that’s stupid. I dislike them on me, that’s all. My mother was beautiful. That’s why my father married her. She reminded me of that often enough while showing me how to disguise each one of my flaws.
I drop back into the present with a solid thump. My fingers are stained with silver, glittering in the light.
“Excuse me,” I say, pushing my way out the door before Agnes has the chance to ask what’s wrong. I don’t feel well. My face is flushed but clammy, like a fever sweat. My chest is tight.
When I reach the corridor, I’m relieved to feel my phone buzz with an incoming call. The first one on my new mobile and I give a satisfied sigh when I see it’s my father.
Finally.
“About time you returned one of my calls,” I scold him the moment I finish my greeting. “I thought you were avoiding me.”
“Just making sure you settled in with your fiancé without my interference,” he says, then laughs as though it’s a ridiculous thing. “Do you have time for a coffee with your old man? I’m downstairs.”
“You’re here!” I feel ridiculously happy at the news, highlighting how worried I’d been by his uncharacteristic silence. Guess he’s not washing me out of his life after all. The fear had been so deep-rooted that I hadn’t even put it to words until now. Now that it was consigned to the past.
I hang up and rush to change, having agreed to meet at Micah’s downstairs bakery in ten minutes. There’s icing sugar all over the lovely green dress I wore to lunch. I swap it out for a more casual paisley print that looks more like something my father would pick out for me.
When I arrive downstairs and circle around to the bakery lobby, Warren close behind me, I see my father straight away. He does a double take as he realises the large guard intends to play my shadow, then recovers and walks across to greet me, pressing a kiss to each cheek.
“You want to try somewhere further afield?” my dad asks, his eyes flicking back to Warren before returning to assess my response. “Maybe leave gargantuan at home.”
“Take me for coffee and you have to take Warren,” I tell him, not even bothering to repeat his suggestion to the guard. I hook my hand over his elbow. “Or we could go back upstairs if you prefer. Agnes makes the best coffee.”
“No. No, you’re good.” He side-eyes the bodyguard once more, then dismisses him. “Perhaps we could get one to go. There’s a nice park not far down the street.”
That’s further than I’ve managed to get so far, so I’m happy to let him lead the way. When we take a seat on a public bench, my dad glares at Warren until the guard takes a seat opposite.
Between the foot traffic and the nearby sounds of construction, it’s noisy and as I take a sip of the not-as-good-as-Agnes’s-coffee I wonder why my dad would want to bring me here.
“I was getting worried you’d never speak to me again,” I tell him, having to raise my voice to be heard above the background noise.
“Just playing my cards close to my chest until I knew I could pull everything off,” he tells me with a satisfied smile. “And I would’ve confided in you sooner, but you’ve never been one to hide your true feelings. This wouldn’t have worked if we were reliant on your ability to lie.”
I frown, not following his answer and having to play it over in my mind again to make sure it wasn’t something I heard wrong.
“Don’t worry,” he continues. “The worst is over now. I’ll soon have you out of that promissory note.”
“What note?” I’m still struggling to follow. I feel like I came in midway through a conversation and no one’s bothering to backtrack to fill me in. “What d’you mean?”
“Oh, my darling. I’m sorry to have left you in the dark for so long but you’re not marrying that man tomorrow.” He pauses, sipping his coffee and turning his shoulder to hide his mouth from the guard. “Don’t you know, I’d never arrange anything like that without your input? Your happiness is the only thing that’s ever mattered to me.”
I want to burst into tears. My fingernails dig into the flesh of my thigh to stop doing precisely that. These are the words I’ve been desperate to hear since Monday. From the moment he made that infernal announcement and set me on this path.
