Holly Read online

  So, what was he up to, then? Was he the sort of bloke who preyed on young girls? The type who couldn’t hack it with someone his own age, so tried it on with schoolgirls. He’d more than likely have wanted me to dress up in school uniform and call him Daddy. I thought about our uniform at the shop and winced: he’d probably fancied me in that, all cutesy and Victorian doll. He might have taken a photo of me – some of the doodles did. He might have a photo of me in his bedroom at home and … I shuddered.

  Should I tell the police? Should I say I was being pestered? But then I shouldn’t have agreed to meet him. They’d just say I’d brought it on myself, asked for it. I couldn’t even tell Mum and Dad.

  I leaned against the tree and did deep breathing and very gradually my heart stopped its mad pounding.

  I didn’t want to go home, and I knew Ella wouldn’t be back yet, so I walked round to Alex’s house, running and rerunning the horrible, weird scenario in my head. He’d said this, I’d said that, and then he’d said …

  Alex was in his room playing music so loudly that I could hear it halfway down the road. It took four long rings at his door before he heard me.

  He looked ruffled and scruffy, but pleased to see me. ‘That’s lucky,’ he said. ‘My mum and dad are out.’ He raised his eyebrows meaningfully and I pretended not to know what he meant.

  ‘Something horrible’s happened,’ I said and I pushed his front door shut behind me and leant on it for a moment, feeling trembly again.

  He was on his way into the sitting room and he turned and looked at me. ‘What?’

  ‘I went to meet that man.’

  ‘The bloke who’s been sending you presents?’ he asked, surprised and cross. ‘You didn’t tell me. What did you want to do that for?’

  ‘I just wanted him to have his stuff back,’ I said. ‘I was going to give it to him and then go.’

  ‘What was he like, then?’

  ‘Old,’ I said.

  ‘How old? Thirty? Sixty? A hundred?’

  ‘About forty,’ I said.

  We went into the sitting room and sat on the sofa. He put his arm round my shoulders. ‘You look really funny,’ he said. ‘All pale under your freckles.’

  ‘It was horrible.’ I pushed my head into Alex’s chest as if I could hide there. ‘He looked quite ordinary, but – ’

  ‘What did he say, then? Something filthy?’

  ‘It wasn’t that it was filthy. Not that. Well, it was in a way … ’ I broke off.

  ‘You can tell me what he said. I’m not going to be shocked, am I? You’ll feel better once you’ve said it.’

  I looked up at him looking all ordinary and safe; a part of my life that I didn’t have to worry about. Of course I could tell him.

  ‘He said something mad. He said he was my father!’ I burst out.

  Alex looked at me in astonishment. ‘What? And – what? – he wanted you to play games or something?’

  I shook my head. ‘He just said – ’ I put on a slight American accent – ‘ “Holly, you’re my daughter”.’

  ‘Blimey,’ Alex said. He ran a hand through his hair so that it stuck up even more. ‘What a weird thing!’ He shook his head. ‘What’re you going to do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all. I can’t, can I? I mean, it’s not an offence to go round telling people you’re their father, is it? I can’t even tell my mum about it because I promised her I’d put him off.’ As I said this, I thought of something. That previous Sunday when she’d suddenly changed her mind about meeting him, had she actually seen him standing there?

  Alex opened and closed his mouth, trying to form words. After a moment he said to me quite seriously, ‘Look, I’m not being funny, but it’s not true, is it?’

  ‘No!’ I sat bolt upright, filled with fury and immediately discounting my last thought. ‘Of course it’s not. How can you even think that?’

  He shrugged. ‘I dunno. It just seems a weird thing for a bloke to come up with. I mean, you hear about some pervy goings-on these days – men who like licking feet and dressing up in nappies and all that – but this doesn’t seem the same, really. I mean, why go to all the bother of – ’

  ‘I don’t know!’ I turned on him angrily. ‘I’ve come round here for you to make me feel better, not for you to start questioning me! He’s mad! He’s a lunatic! How dare he come along and start messing my life up like this?’

  ‘OK, OK, calm down,’ Alex said. He patted my head. ‘Let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll make you a coffee. And a sandwich, if you like. My dad cooked some sausages earlier. How about a sausage sandwich?’

  ‘OK,’ I muttered.

  We had the sausage sandwiches – I was starving – and then we talked a bit more about the madman and what I could do. The answer, of course, was nothing. I had to ignore it. Pretend nothing had happened. I felt a little better when I remembered that he’d said something about being on a three-month contract and going back to the States shortly. But had he been lying about that, too? Could he be completely off his trolley about some things but rational about other things?

  We talked about what he’d said again and again, and then we went on to other, more normal things. An hour or so later I was stretched out on the sofa and sort of getting things into perspective when Alex said, ‘My mum and dad won’t be in until eleven tonight.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So nothing!’ There was a smile twisting up the corners of his mouth. ‘It’s just that … well, we don’t often get a house to ourselves, do we?’

  I sat up. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

  He shrugged, still with the little smile.

  ‘I don’t believe you!’

  ‘What? What have I said?’

  ‘I’ve had a shock like … like that and you – you – want to try it on, don’t you? You want me to go upstairs and – ’

  ‘Not necessarily upstairs,’ he said, trying to be funny.

  ‘Oh, get lost!’ I said. I stood up and smoothed down my T-shirt.

  ‘It was just a suggestion,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to get the hump about it.’

  ‘I can’t believe you can be so … so crude,’ I said. ‘At a time like this – ’

  ‘Look, sorry,’ he said. ‘I just thought it might help take your mind off things. My mistake.’

  ‘Too right your mistake,’ I said. I went into the hall and picked up my rucksack. ‘I’m going round to Ella’s.’

  ‘Oh, don’t,’ Alex said, looking at me ruefully, head on one side. ‘I said I’m sorry. You know I’d never do anything you didn’t want to do.’

  I sighed and paused in the hallway. Maybe I was overreacting, but I just didn’t feel like doing anything – not even a kiss or a snog, certainly not anything more. And I was really angry with Alex for even thinking that I would. Such an unfeeling, blokeish thing to do.

  ‘All right, I forgive you,’ I said. ‘But I’m still going round to Ella’s. I just want to see what she says.’

  ‘Ah, the lovely little Holly!’ the pillock said, answering the door to me. ‘I do hope we’re not prickly today.’

  I managed to drag a smile out. It was difficult because he was wearing a yellow sweatshirt with something disgusting down the front and it was all I could do not to shudder and rush past him. ‘Is Ella in, please?’ I asked.

  ‘Judging by the noise … ’ He rolled his eyes and pointed upwards. ‘I think she must be.’

  I went past him and up to Ella’s room. I could feel him looking at me all the way up the stairs.

  Within ten minutes, I’d told Ella the whole scenario. Her reaction was the same as Alex’s.

  ‘That’s just crazy,’ she said, and then she looked at me, bewildered. ‘But what’s he get out of that, then?’

  I shrugged. ‘Dunno. Maybe he goes round the country pretending he has daughters everywhere. Like a sailor has a girl in every port, you know?’

  ‘That’s seriously weird.’

  ‘You’re telling
me.’

  She was silent for a moment, and then she said. ‘I wonder what the thing was in the box?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I wonder if he’ll send anything else now, or just leave it?’

  I shook my head again. I just didn’t know.

  Ella and I decided not to go to the cinema after all, so I was home when Mum and Dad returned from Nan’s. Dad went into the kitchen and started making one of his fresh tomato pizzas, leaving me in the sitting room with Mum, watching TV while she ironed a couple of uniforms for work – she’s a booking-in clerk at a hospital and she had an early shift the next day.

  I’d found out from Ella what stalls there had been at the craft fair and told Mum about them. ‘There wasn’t anything really interesting,’ I said. ‘Loads of picture frames. More stalls selling those than anything else.’

  ‘Did you buy any earrings?’

  ‘Nope. Couldn’t see any I liked.’ I looked at her hopefully. ‘Do you want your fiver back?’

  ‘Course I don’t. I dare say you’ll find some in the week that you want to buy.’ She finished the uniforms, put the iron to one side and folded up the board. ‘Did you … you haven’t heard anything else all week, then?’

  I knew immediately what she meant and felt my cheeks beginning to go red. ‘Nope. Nothing at all.’

  ‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you, Holly?’

  ‘Course I would.’

  ‘I know you think I’m terribly nosy, but I’m just concerned for your welfare. It comes with being a mum, see. We just can’t help it.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ My mind suddenly churned with questions. OK, the man was a lunatic; I had complete faith in my mum and dad being who I’d always thought they were, and the whole idea was ridiculous – but … if I could just ask a few things to be perfectly, utterly sure.

  How could I ask anything, though, without admitting to myself that there was just the tiniest grain of doubt?

  ‘I don’t suppose he was the Leonardo di Caprio love of my life, anyway,’ I said. ‘He was probably just some old geezer … ’ I gave a short laugh. ‘I don’t expect the love of my life will come along for years and years.’

  ‘So it’s not Alex? The love of your life, I mean,’ Mum asked.

  ‘Nah! Doubt it.’ I pretended to consider things. ‘I mean, how often do you meet the right guy when you’re sixteen?’

  ‘Not very often, I shouldn’t think,’ Mum said. ‘Most people change a great deal between sixteen and twenty-five. At the end of those years you sometimes end up being a completely different person.’

  I nodded, as if considering this. ‘So when you met Dad, did you think straight away that he was – ’ I lowered my voice dramatically – ‘the one?’

  ‘No, I certainly didn’t,’ Mum said, laughing.

  ‘Did you have a lot of other boyfriends?’

  ‘One or two,’ Mum said.

  ‘Serious ones?’ I asked suddenly. ‘Did you wish you’d married someone else?’

  Mum looked up at me sharply. ‘Of course not!’ she said. ‘Dad and I are a very happy couple. What on earth made you ask that?’

  I swallowed hard. ‘Oh, nothing.’ I said airily. ‘Just interested.’

  Just – suddenly – very interested.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘They’ve rung!’ Ella said the following Wednesday. ‘What? Who have?’

  It was a quarter to nine and we were in the staffroom getting into our gear, adjusting our hats on our heads so they looked less awful and fluffing out our skirts.

  ‘Them. The helpline about my dad!’

  ‘Really? What did they say?’

  Stacey and Mandy weren’t listening, they were too busy anguishing over their hats, but Ella lowered her voice anyway. ‘They said they may have a lead.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Someone saw his name on Teletext and rang in to say someone of that name is working in their local garage.’

  ‘Really? What local garage? Round here, d’you mean?’

  Ella shook her head. ‘They wouldn’t say. They don’t tell you that; it could be anywhere in the country.’

  ‘What happens now, then?’

  ‘They write to him at this garage to see if he really is my dad and they ask him if he’s got the same birth date and everything. If it’s not him, they say he’ll probably write back and tell them. If it is him, they send the letter from me – the one we wrote.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then just see what happens,’ Ella said. She gave a shiver. ‘Maureen said not to build my hopes up too much, it was just a lead. It might not be my dad after all.’

  I smiled at her in what was meant to be a bracing sort of way. ‘It might, though.’

  ‘OK, girls!’ Upstairs, Mrs Potter was about to turn over the ‘Open for fresh cream cakes’ sign on the front door.

  ‘What about you? He hasn’t been in touch, has he?’ Ella said as we went up the stairs.

  I shook my head. ‘I think I might have mentioned it if he had!’

  ‘No more presents, either. That’s a bit of a shame. It’s not every day you get someone splashing money on you, is it?’

  ‘I don’t want loony money, thank you very much,’ I said.

  When I got home from work that night, I went up to my room and stared at my reflection in the mirror. I was looking at that eye. That eye that was the same as the man’s eye.

  Why hadn’t I told Ella or Alex about that identical two-coloured eye, one part brown, one part blue?

  The answer was: because I’d been worried that they’d pick up on it. Say, ‘That’s odd,’ or ‘That’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?’ or ‘Maybe there’s something in it after all.’

  But there couldn’t be something in it, could there? It couldn’t be partly true. Either it was, or it wasn’t. Either I was, or I wasn’t.

  No, I couldn’t possibly be. How could I? But then why had Mum suddenly changed her mind like that?

  I flopped down on my bed. I had to think.

  We’d done a mock trial in our drama class last year: the trial of Richard III. The object was to decide whether he’d killed the princes in the Tower or not.

  I’d been chosen as part of his defence team, and when we’d started, like everyone else in class, I’d thought he was guilty. My reasoning went like this: we’d already done the Shakespeare play of the same name, and everyone knew old Shakespeare was a genius, so it wasn’t likely he’d got it wrong, was it? Richard III was a killer and that was that.

  Jim O’Toole, our drama teacher, had told us that Shakespeare wasn’t necessarily writing the truth, though. He’d said Shakespeare was writing for the stage, to make the best dramatic impact – and also to suit the king who was on the throne at the time. O’Toole said we were to look at the facts.

  So when I investigated properly (reference library, historical documents, the whole bit) I found that the facts – the true historical facts – didn’t match the play. I then wrote everything up and constructed what I thought was a brilliant defence for old Richard III so that by the end of the month, after the mock trial and witnesses and everything, everyone in the class – including the prosecution – thought he was innocent.

  And that was what I had to do now. Look at the facts, coldly and dispassionately. Look at the facts as if my whole world wasn’t going to crumble if the result wasn’t what I wanted it to be, if the dad I’d known and loved all my life wasn’t … But no, he had to be!

  I’d been born on Christmas Eve 1984. So that meant Mum had got pregnant with me in March 1984. She and Dad had got married in July 1980, so the first thing I had to find out was whether they were getting on all right in 1984. Had Dad worked away from home at that time? Had they had a terrible row? Had they had a trial separation or something? It was possible. They wouldn’t have later told me, would they?

  I started to think along those lines and then I pulled myself up short. What was I doing? I was allowing the madman to influence me! I was ac
tually questioning, if only in my head, my mum and dad’s marriage and the identity of my father. I was jeopardising my family because of him. No! He wouldn’t drive me mad. I wouldn’t let him!

  I jumped up, went downstairs and put the TV on. I put it on quietly, because Mum, being on early shift, was in her room having a nap.

  Because I was on my own, though, pretty soon I started to think more things. About descriptions and appearances, for instance.

  Mum’s quite tall for a woman, one metre sixty-eight, whereas Dad is quite short for a man, about one metre seventy. I’m nearly as tall as him. This man, the madman, had seemed very tall. Over one metre eighty, I thought.

  Dad has mousy dark hair and hazel eyes. Mum has got very dark hair and brown eyes. I have blond hair and one blue and one odd eye. The madman has very blond hair and one blue and one odd eye.

  What else? Dad’s a bit older than Mum, he’s fifty-six, and Mum’s fifty. The madman seemed to be about forty-five, so he was younger than Mum. Dad was forty when they had me, Mum was thirty-four and he, say, was about twenty-nine. I didn’t know what this proved.

  The only other thing, which shouldn’t have come into the equation but did, somehow, was that Dad wasn’t all that attractive. He was gorgeous and cuddly, of course, but he had a paunch and was balding and wore old-fashioned clothes and glasses. If you gave him an attractiveness rating from 1 to 10 he’d get about 3, whereas Mum, despite her age, would get about 8. The madman, much as I hated to admit it, would be about an 8 too. I only thought about this because I’d read in a magazine just a few days before that you were usually attracted to people who had about the same attractiveness rating as yourself.

  Unbidden, a picture of Mum and the madman came into my head. Somehow, horribly, they matched; seemed to go together as a couple. Both tall, good-looking, quite striking in their own way.

  They went together, actually, better than Mum and Dad did.

  I pulled myself up again. How could I even think that? I switched between channels hurriedly, looking for something to interest me.