‘Listen, Vivian, I really am sorry about… you know. Letting Sarah down.’
She studies my face for a moment, then gives a brief nod. ‘Good,’ she says.
The word makes a little anger flare inside of me, but I push it back down. Let her have the upper hand. Because this isn’t just about me. I’m not here to argue; I’m here for my son. For Sarah. And if we can get along it’s for the best.
‘I should have driven straight here,’ I add.
Her brow furrows. ‘Oh!’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Oh, nothing…’
‘No, what?’
She sighs, leans on the counter, her face closer to mine than I might have chosen. ‘I assumed you were apologising for letting Sarah down back in the day. Not in the past week,’ she says. ‘I must admit I was a bit surprised that you’d come to your senses after all this time.’
‘Back in the day?’
‘Well, yes. When you knocked up my daughter then disappeared to live your life. Leaving her to struggle,’ she says and it’s so matter-of-fact that I wonder for a moment whether that’s what I actually did.
But no. I stuck around. I supported Sarah. Financially and emotionally, as much as I was capable. Didn’t I? ‘I didn’t knock Sarah up,’ I say, and she shoots me a confused glance. ‘I mean, yes, we did get pregnant’ – she snorts at the ‘we’, but I carry on – ‘but it wasn’t… you know, thoughtless like that.’
‘Yes, well,’ she says, flapping a hand as if it’s not important, when it clearly is still very much to her. And to me, actually.
‘Vivian, I was a kid. We were kids. I did my best, I thought… I?—’
‘You left her!’ she says, her voice sharper, the volume repressed so it comes out as more of a hiss.
‘I didn’t! I tried… I was there for the birth. I helped with Louis. It’s not as if I abandoned her.’
She shrugs as if again, this weren’t important. ‘Well, whatever you did or didn’t do, the impact was the same,’ she says. ‘Sarah’s life was ruined and yours carried on just as it would have otherwise.’
I open my mouth.
‘Oh yes, I know youpaid,’ she tells me, as if giving money was incidental. ‘Took Louis to the park. But Sarah put her life on hold. Because of you. Her life was ruined because of you!’
‘Sarah’s life wasn’t ruined!’
Vivian huffs. ‘She had so much potential.’
‘Vivian, I’m not sure where this is coming from. And yes, maybe I could have done more. I… it was a long time ago. I was still a kid. And I realise that’s not an excuse. But it’s a reason. Iwasa kid.Sarahwas a kid. And if the same situation happened now, things would be very different.’
‘I dare say,’ she sniffs with a dismissive flick of her hand.
‘I loved your daughter. Love her.’ I do, I realise. And wonder for a second whether I ever stopped. But now is not the time for introspection. ‘And I’m sure that having a baby made her life difficult back then. But how can you act as if she hasn’t achieved her full potential?’
‘It’s only a miracle she managed to drag herself back on track. And everything has been twice as hard for her as it would have been otherwise.’
I look at Vivian, at her perfect hair and make-up, her neat clothing. Her beautiful kitchen. None of it seems to match the resentful, creased expression on her face.
‘Maybe it wasn’t ideal?—’
‘Not ideal?’ she barks. ‘How do you think it made me feel, made her father feel, to watch her struggle?’
‘What about Sarah? What about howshefelt?’ I snap.
‘You should have married her,’ she says. ‘You should have stuck by her.’
