Page 84

I know I have no right to contact you. I know it’s been years. You know I wouldn’t do this if there were any other choices for me to make. But there is no other choice.

She needs you.

Please.

Don’t do it for me.

Do it for her.

Delilah

I get the same sick feeling in my stomach as I did when I first read the message. Then, there was far too much to take in. Delilah reaching out. The request for me to help a sick child. The fact that Maddie knows Verity isn’t her biological mother. That there’s a potential for me to have a relationship with her, but a serious illness could steal everything from me.

Of course I’m going to help. It was a natural instinct to agree. We had a short, terse exchange to determine times and locations. I was on the first flight, and tomorrow afternoon, I’m meeting Delilah at Verity’s house to talk. The day afterwards, I’m due to get tested to check my eligibility as a match.

I’m crossing my fingers that I can help Maddie. We may have been forced apart, but the biological pull is intense. She’s my daughter. If my bone marrow could make her better, she can have it. If she needs a kidney, she can have mine. When she’s better and if she wants a relationship, of course I’m there. No question, no hesitation.

I explained everything to Pippa yesterday—the first time I’ve ever said a word to anybody that I have a daughter—and I listened patiently as she heeded caution. She talked about nondisclosure agreements, about backdated child maintenance and how to manipulate the optics in our favour. I didn’t care about what she had to say, and I feel a little guilty about how harshly I responded to her. All I care about is helping Maddie, getting her better, and then seeing how we can build some foundations.

Delilah, though, is going to realise that my help comes with strings. I’ll give Maddie everything she needs. Anything. But I want to have input. I want to be there for her. If the doctors say she needs a transplant, I want to get her treatment with the best doctors, at the best hospitals. I want to be part of the decision-making. I don’t want to be left in the dark.

She once denied me my rights when it came to Maddie, but now I’m demanding them back. I know I need to tread carefully. I can’t go in with all barrels blazing, because I know it’ll upset Delilah, and I don’t know how long the desire to help Maddie will keep her threats at bay. At what point will I be seen as surplus to the requirements, and the threat to tell the world I was a teacher who fucked a student becomes reality? I need to get her onside, to get Maddie better and to form the basis of a relationship with her so Delilah never dares tell those lies.

When Maddie is better, I want to do things we missed out on, and I want to get to know her. For her to get to know me, as more than a man on a screen, or whatever stories Delilah has told her about me. I want a proper relationship with my daughter.

Her mother, however, can burn in hell.

I groan as I remind myself that I need to play nice, keep my emotions in check. I can’t let myself be riled up by Delilah. I’ve only got a few hours before I need to be up, in the car, and facing her for the first time since I walked out of her flat. I have no idea how it will go between us, but I remind myself she isn’t the focus. Maddie is. She’s the priority. Nothing else matters.

I’ll bury my hatred, my hurt, and my heart, for now. Focus on Maddie.

I just hope Delilah can keep her focus too.

***

I follow the direction of my satnav, telling me my destination is on the right. I park the car on the street, looking at the house where my daughter grew up. It’s large, and it takes me by surprise because I know how Delilah lived back then. Either her father married into money, or he had money and left Delilah to struggle in poverty as well as in an abusive household. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t look like Maddie would have wanted for much in life so far.

There’s a large driveway with five cars parked on it and space for more. The drive is lined with tall trees, a lush green lawn area, and flowerbeds that scream somebody either likes gardening or they pay for somebody to tend them regularly. The house itself is rendered in a soft cream colour, with fancy grey window frames and doors. Each window has the same style blinds and colour curtains to frame them.

The street is quiet; one of those areas where I’d put money on the younger residents playing safely in the front gardens in the summer, maybe picking flowers or playing ballgames on the grassy sections outside each house, offering a buffer between the edges of the driveways and the road. I’m grateful for the quietness.

I get out of my car and start down the paved walkway at the side of the cars, heading to the front door, trying not to let my heart pound in my chest as I get closer. Before I can knock, the door swings open.

“You must be Joseph,” a man says. He seems far too jaunty for what I’m facing today. I nod at him. “Nice to meet you. I’m Simon, Verity’s partner. I’m just off to pick up Maddie from school. Go through. Everybody is in the kitchen waiting for you.” He points down the hallway to a door that’s ajar before stepping out of the house.

He watches as I go in, and then he pulls the front door shut. I hear the jangle of his car keys as he does so, and then his cheerful whistle as he walks away.

I have no idea what I’m really supposed to do in this situation. I’m in a stranger’s home. One I’ve never been in before. Am I supposed to just wander into the kitchen? Do I keep my shoes on or take them off? I curse the time of my arrival. Two minutes later, I’d have been forced to knock on the door, and this uncertainty wouldn’t be there.

There are a couple of shoes near the front door, so I kick off mine, square my shoulders, and head in the direction of the door Simon had pointed to. I clear my throat and knock on it when I get there before stepping in.

It’s a large kitchen, not dissimilar to the one at my house in the UK. There’s a spacious and well-equipped cooking section, a dining area, and a space for entertaining, with a sofa positioned towards the television that hangs on the wall. I get a vision of Maddie sitting here as a young child, curled up on the sofa and watching cartoons as Verity cooked her dinner.

Gathered in the kitchen are two men and two women. I recognise two people. Felix is here, of course, in a suit that makes him look like he’s just come from the office. He’s glaring at me like he wants to murder me with his bare hands. There’s a fleeting second where I’m grateful that he also has no shoes on. I don’t know why, but it feels like a leveller between us.

“You must be Joseph,” the woman I don’t recognise says, stepping in front of Felix.

She’s older than me, and I assume this is Verity. She looks exhausted, the type of exhaustion that exists bone deep and isn’t cured by a few good nights of sleep.