Make or Break

On the Wednesday of my second forced week off work I got a knock at the door at 10 a.m. I opened it up to a crisp late-February morning to find my father holding two takeaway coffee cups, his breath a white fog against the blue sky behind him. I hadn’t spoken to him in nearly two weeks. He looked older.

‘Your mother says it’s easier to have difficult conversations when you’re side by side, something about the no eye contact making it easier to open up, so I thought we should go for a walk.’ He held out a coffee with my name written on the side in black Sharpie. ‘Shall we, Plum?’ His words were firm but his eyes pleaded.

I stood in the doorway in my running gear contemplating the coffee steaming between us.

Dad’s idea of a walk was to drive up to Battersea Park and sit on a bench next to the boating lake surrounded by inch-thick duck poo.

‘Why aren’t we having this conversation with Annabelle?’ I asked, after a period of silent duck contemplation.

‘You seem to have taken this the hardest,’ Dad replied.

‘That’s because I’m the lucid one. Annabelle seems like everything’s all fine and dandy,’ I said, a tad more bitter than I’d intended. ‘What does dandy mean, anyway . . .?’

Dad ignored my question. ‘Annabelle and I have had a few chats. She’s hurting too, Jess. She just shows it differently. Annabelle understands . . .’ He searched for a word. ‘She understands making mistakes and living with them. But look at Hunter and Katie. Would you have it any other way?’

Why did everyone keep bringing up the children? They were hitting me where it hurt and it worked. I would have to concede that I would change nothing about my existence (except I’d probably ask for less anxiety, more height and for less of a lady moustache. Correction: NO lady moustache) and I couldn’t even allow the thought to settle in my head about Hunter and Katie not— No! I wouldn’t even finish the sentence.

Dad looked at me. ‘You’ve never done anything really wrong, Plum, so this is hitting you harder.’

‘I have too done things wrong,’ I said, indignant but not really sure why.

Dad gave me a ‘let’s hear it then’ look.

‘I’ve . . . I . . .’ Again I found myself searching my unchequered past for something, anything that proved I was an uncontrollable badass. ‘Sometimes in supermarkets I change the herbs around so they read Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme,’ I said in tune (but dramatically out of tune) to the song. I admit it wasn’t all that rebellious, and in some lesser-stocked supermarkets, ones that hadn’t branched out to exotics such as Saffron, Sumac and Tarragon, it meant I only swapped around the Sage and the Rosemary.

Dad nodded, looking flummoxed, then angled himself towards me. ‘Your mother thought you might have a lot of questions and that I should find a neutral place in which you could ask them.’ He said this with a glance around at the mothers and babies, joggers, dog walkers and people talking loudly on their phones, wondering if this counted as neutral. He turned back to me. ‘So, Plum, I know you’ve been struggling with this . . . situation we find ourselves in. And I want to do anything I can to help you come to terms with our unique . . . ah . . . position.’

I sat at the far end of the bench with one leg bent, the foot resting on the knee of my other leg, and picked at a thread escaping from my sock.

‘Ask me anything,’ Dad said, his voice hopeful. ‘No subject is off limits.’

I hated my brain right then for wanting an explanation of the expression ‘the world is your oyster’.

‘Plum?’ Dad said after a few minutes in which I neither said nor did anything more than sip my coffee and play with my sock. ‘Maybe I should start.’ Dad fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a piece of notepad with Mum’s handwriting on it.

‘You mother thinks you probably want to know if I ever felt guilty and if my wife—’

I shook my head. No, no, no, no! I wasn’t ready to hear this! ‘Stop,’ I said.

Dad stopped and waited, his expression nervous.

I looked up. ‘I only want to know one thing.’

Dad took a deep breath then nodded.

‘Who is your real family?’ I said. ‘Who do you want to live with?’

I waited while a host of painful thoughts traversed my father’s tanned face.

Then his face fell and he looked at his hands. ‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t make that decision. It’s too hard.’

I picked at my sock. I knew how he felt. Everything was too hard. But this was a situation created by him. My father. The man who’d wiped away my tears and put plasters on my knee. The man who’d taught me to ride a bike, who’d built Annabelle and me a tree house where I’d played Barbies with the girl next door and where Annabelle had smoked joints and drunk Carling. He was the man who’d helped me win the Year 3 geography project prize by bringing back stamps and maps from his exotic travels, and clapped the loudest when I got my certificate. He was the man who made me feel loved, and safe, and important. He was the man who’d shattered my world. Who had broken my heart.

‘I look at you and . . .’ I swallowed. ‘I don’t see the dad I used to know. I see a stranger.’

Dad’s face crumpled. The agony at seeing him so distressed was overshadowed by my need to self-preserve. I was about to majorly fall apart and I wanted to do that alone.

‘I want to go home now,’ I said quietly.

As soon as Dad pulled up at my flat I flew out of the car, through the front door, fell on the sofa and my body convulsed and shuddered with huge, breath-stealing sobs. I stayed there crying until my body had completely run out of liquid then dragged myself into the kitchen and gulped down glass after glass of cold water. After checking my blotchy skin in the mirror I took off to Tooting Bec Common and ran round and round the fields, pushing myself harder and harder, but still I couldn’t escape the image of Dad’s face, desperate, terrified and crestfallen. I hated hurting him. But I was hurting too. I ran as fast as I could, thumping my feet on the pavement all the way home, but when I got there, breathless and exhausted, the thoughts and emotions had come with me.

I jumped in the shower and was in there so long I had no idea how much time had passed. Once dressed I stood in my room, my father’s anguished expression came into my mind again and I had to use all my emotional might to fight back another round of sobbing. I needed a bigger distraction. I called Lana.

‘How do I get Jimmy to come to London?’

‘Tell him how you feel.’

‘I don’t think it’s enough. I know that sounds romantic and all that but in reality, once you’ve said all the lovey-dovey stuff, you’ve still got to pay your bills, right?’

‘OK, give me more background info.’

I told her about Jimmy being brought up by his Classics professor father, about Ian coming out, his father’s reaction and the ten years Jimmy hadn’t communicated with him, bar the odd unemotional Christmas card, because of it. I told her about the course that he couldn’t afford, the potential of a job offer afterwards and the most important part.

‘I want him here.’

‘OK, here’s what you do.’

A mere two hours later I called Jimmy.

‘Your dad is awesome.’

‘What?’ Jimmy said.

‘He joined a group for fathers who have gay sons. He joined it, like, eight years ago, going by the date of his posts.’

‘Dad posts on a gay website?’

‘Gay children support website.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I googled him.’

That had been Lana’s advice. Google the dad and see what I could come up with.

Jimmy was quiet for a moment. ‘So,’ he cleared his throat. ‘What does he say?’

I smiled. ‘He says amazing stuff. He gives advice to other fathers now. He says he hopes by sharing his mistakes that other fathers won’t lose the years he’s lost with his sons.’

‘He says that?’ Jimmy’s voice broke.

‘Yup,’ I said, gently. ‘And he mentions you a lot.’

I listed some of the posts I’d read, then the phone line was silent for a while. I was just about to ask if he was still there when I heard quiet weeping. It broke my heart. I wanted to jump through the phone and hold him in my arms and kiss away his tears. And once that was sorted, jump on him and shag him stupid.

‘One of his posts was to a father who had said horrible things to his son and hadn’t seen him for years,’ I said, wanting to tell Jimmy all about the great things his father had posted. ‘The son had gotten married and adopted a baby. The dad wanted to take it all back and get to know his new son-in-law and grandchild. Your dad wrote that when a relationship has broken down, and horrible things have been said and done, the best thing to do is apologise and ask if they’d like to try and start again; to build an entirely new relationship from the ground up.’

Jimmy sniffed.

‘I reckon that’s pretty good advice . . .’ I waited and allowed Jimmy the time to process. I heard nothing but his irregular breathing and the odd sniff. ‘Maybe you could do that with him?’ I said after a while. ‘I can help you, if you like.’

Jimmy sniffed again. ‘Maybe you could do that with your dad too?’