Stephanie was left speechless.
‘You have to believe me. The
only reason I didn’t tell you any of this before was because I didn’t want to
hurt you. I knew you needed a friend to help you through this. If I told you
about Peter before, you wouldn’t have taken any of my advice seriously. I think
I’ve learnt a lot from my experience with Peter, and I wanted to help you and
Alice. Anyway, you can’t really compare what I did, with what Roger and Miranda
did, can you?’
‘Sorry, Rita. This past week has
been one revelation after the other. I’m finding it hard to keep my mind from
exploding.’
‘It must be hard for you. It’s
partly my fault. I should have told you about Peter before; but I promise I was
only trying to help.’
Stephanie sighed. ‘I know.
You’ve been the only person I could talk to about any of this, and I’m really
grateful. I’m just shocked. I’m not thinking straight.’
‘I know,’ said Rita. ‘It’s
okay.’
‘So what do you think I should
do, about Roger and Miranda? Alice is so upset.’
‘I don’t know, Steph. I just
don’t understand how they could have turned Alice away. I still remember the
first time I saw my Peter. I grabbed hold of him and I couldn’t let go. I was
so happy. I was crying, and I just wanted to make up for all the lost years. I
can’t even begin to imagine why Roger and Miranda acted that way towards
Alice.’
‘I just have to do something,’
said Stephanie.
***
When Stephanie put down the phone, she desperately
searched her flat for her “A-Z Street Atlas”. In the days when Alice was
younger, Stephanie had owned a car and driven everywhere, never taking public
transport; but one day she decided to take the Tube to work and saw that as a
better option; she'd sold her car and never driven anywhere since. Sometimes,
she regretted it; especially when she had to go somewhere late in the evening,
or when the trains were so packed she couldn't get a seat—but mostly she liked the
convenience of taking the Tube, not having to worry about car maintenance, and
she'd been able to start reading again. She'd loved reading as a young girl,
but life got in the way. Ever since she had started travelling to work on
public transport, she'd rediscovered the written word, and could get so lost
and absorbed in a book sometimes that she almost missed her stop. The downside
to travelling everywhere underground, was that she was hopeless at directions
now, and whilst frantically searching for her A to Z, she pondered how—since
she had started using the Tube—she had never had much use for the atlas.
Hope
I didn’t throw it away,
she thought.
She looked through some old
books that were sitting idly on the unit in the living room, gathering dust.
Then she saw it. It was old and tattered, and she wondered whether the streets
had changed since the late 1970s. She looked at the index.
Alice said the
name of the street where Roger lives is “Oakfield”... No... “Oakleigh”, no...
what is it? It’s “Oak”-something.
She looked down the list of road names.
“Oakview”! That’s it! “Oakview Road, Finchley”.
Chapter Fourteen
Sunday 24th August 1997
Twenty-seven, Oakview Road. The address was now firmly
burnt into Stephanie’s mind. She emerged from Finchley Central Underground
Station at 11.30 a.m. The memory of Alice, so distraught at dinner the night
before, nagged at her.
As she walked towards Oakview
Road, her temperature rose at the thought of how Roger and Miranda had made
Alice feel so unwelcome. No doubt, they were ashamed of their past, and Alice
probably brought back memories that they would prefer to forget, but she was
their daughter; they owed her a little respect—all she'd wanted was to meet her
parents and get a few simple answers, but they had rejected her.
By the time Stephanie reached
number twenty-seven Oakview Road, she was fuming. She decided to take a few
deep breaths, to calm herself down before she ventured further. For a few
minutes, she sat on the low wall that surrounded the front garden, trying to
convince herself that showing her anger would only make things worse.
Stay
calm, stay calm,
she repeated to herself. The night before, she had hardly
slept as she had been running through in her mind what she would say to Roger
and Miranda.
You messed up my life, I won’t let you do the same to Alice.
How dare you cocoon yourselves in this lie, shutting out your own flesh and
blood? Do you know how upset that child was when she got home? Do you even
care? Have you even got any feelings? Of course you haven’t! The woman who gave
away her child for a bit of money and the man who left his wife and child to
fend for themselves so that he could continue an adulterous affair!
The
thoughts invaded her mind; repeating, rephrasing. In her head she had created
images of what Roger and Miranda would look like now, and how they would be
standing, staring at her as she gave them a piece of her mind.
She had wound herself up to
almost boiling point, unable to think about them without wanting to rant and
rave, and tell them what she really thought of them. Ultimately, she realised
that this would not be the best way to approach the problem. Her goal was to
try to make Roger see that he had been wrong to turn Alice away. She couldn't
afford to alienate him further.
Surely he must have at least one remorseful
bone in his body,
she mused.
She began to feel self-conscious sitting on the wall
outside the house, worried that Roger or Miranda may see her through the
window. She ran her hands through her hair hoping it did not look too
windswept, took a deep breath and then stood up. Hesitantly, she opened the
gate and approached the front door.
She prayed that she could keep
up the ambience of stilted calm at least until she finished saying what she had
come to say. With bated breath, she knocked on the front door. After about half
a minute, the door was opened. Stephanie's eyes widened when she saw who she
knew must be Jane, standing at the door. It was like looking at Alice with a
different hairstyle. She noticed the plaster cast on her right arm and recalled
that the girl had been in the newspaper; one of the survivors of the plane
crash she had read about.
‘Hello,’ said Jane.
‘Hello,’ said Stephanie,
continuing to stare at her. ‘Can I speak to your father? I’m...’ She hesitated.
‘I’m an old friend.’
Jane looked at her, and smiled
politely. ‘Okay, I’ll just call him. Do you want to come in?’
‘Um… yes, thanks.’ Stephanie
felt wary and uncomfortable when she stepped inside the house, and began to
wish she had stayed outside.
Jane closed the door behind her.
‘You can sit in the living room.
I’ll just get my dad.’ Jane pointed to the living room door and then
disappeared upstairs.
Stephanie walked into the room.
It was neat and tidy and looked freshly decorated. The sun was streaming in
through the bay window. She noticed the black leather sofa, and two armchairs.
There were quite a few houseplants in the room; seeing them, she remembered
that Roger had always liked plants when they were living together.
After a few nerve racking
minutes where Stephanie stood as still as a statue in the middle of the room,
not wanting to sit down—wanting to flee but knowing she must stay—Ken walked
through the door. ‘Hello,’ he said.
When she turned to face him, she
noticed the look of surprise on his face.
‘S... S... Stephanie?’ he
stammered. He turned bright red and cupped his face with his hands briefly.
When he slowly removed his
hands, his mouth was open and his eyebrows raised. It had obviously come as a
shock to him that she would visit. Looking at him, she noticed that he looked
old; in fact she was quite startled by just how old he appeared. His hair was
grey and thinning, and he seemed shorter than he had been. It struck her that
she had, quite irrationally, been expecting to see the same man who had walked
out on her all those years ago, but now she was looking at an older man.
Suddenly she didn’t feel so much angry as sorry for him.
‘This is a surprise,’ he said
softly, after a few moments of intense silence.
‘Hmm… I don't know why it should
come as a surprise to you that I'm here after the way you behaved towards
Alice.’ She narrowed her eyes at him, trying hard to still the bubbling rage
within her.
He appeared to be avoiding eye
contact. ‘Um… yes. Well, I can explain all that. You'll understand that it's
for the best.’
Stephanie frowned.
He’s
hoping to explain it all away. Trying to convince me that he’s right again.
‘Please sit down,’ he said.
His voice was beginning to annoy
her now.
Calm down, calm down,
she
told herself.
‘Would you like a drink?’ he
asked.
Was that nervousness that she
could hear in his voice?
She avoided looking at him,
trying to retain her composure, and sat down on the sofa, placing her handbag
next to her. ‘No, I wouldn’t like a drink. I don’t intend to stay for long.
I’ll just say what I have to say, and I’ll leave.’
‘Fine,’ he said. An audible sigh
left his lips.
He sat down on an armchair to
the right hand side of the sofa, his forehead was creased into a frown, and she
could see the lines that time had chiselled there.
‘Where’s Miranda? She should
really hear what I have to say,’ said Stephanie.
‘She’s busy,’ he said, and then
followed his speech with a nervous cough.
‘Surely, she can spare a few
minutes? This is important.’
‘No. You can tell me whatever
you’ve come to say. I’ll tell Miranda.’ He spoke louder now, although his voice
was still tinged with nervousness as if he was dreading what she was about to
say.
‘Hmm… okay, have it your way.
Roger—’
‘CalI me Ken, I haven’t used the
name
Roger
for over ten years,’ he interrupted, drumming his fingers on
the arm of the armchair as he spoke.
‘I don’t give a damn about you,
or your name. You can call yourself anything you like, it won’t change who you
are. You’re still a selfish—’ Stephanie caught her breath and paused for a
moment. She breathed in deeply. Her calming technique wasn't working. Her anger
was like a tap dripping into a sink until it finally overflowed. She sighed and
continued, knowing that she would have to just say what she had come to say and
then leave as soon as possible. The sooner she was out of this place the
better. ‘You haven’t changed at all, have you? You’re still the same. Always
thinking about yourself over everyone else. How dare you treat Alice like that?
Do you know she was in tears last night? She came to my flat for dinner and had
to explain everything to me; how her own parents practically threw her out of
their house. She’s your child. She wanted to find you, to talk to you. All you
could do was turn her away. You couldn’t even spare five minutes of your time
for her after nearly twenty years. You... You and Miranda, both of you, are so
cold, so...’
‘Have you just come here to
abuse me?’ Ken stood up. ‘That's your way, isn't it, Stephanie? The world
revolves around you, and if you don't get your way you stamp your feet and make
a scene. Just remember that if it wasn't for you and your bloody tantrums we
wouldn't be in this mess to begin with! You're the one who wanted a bloody
child.’
Stephanie looked at him,
open-mouthed. ‘How could you say that? You don't mean that, do you?’
‘Face it, Stephanie!’ he said, a
snarl on his face, ‘I never wanted Alice; you did. Go home and take care of
her.’
‘You arrogant bastard!’
‘This is my home,’ he said
leaning towards her and looking into her eyes. ‘I’ll have to ask you to leave
if you continue to insult me.’
‘Oh.’ She nodded. ‘You’re good
at that, aren’t you?’
He glanced at her, venom in his
eyes. ‘What?’
‘You’re good at running away
from your problems! You just can’t bear to hear the truth, can you?’ Stephanie
picked up her handbag, and stood up. ‘Don’t worry, I’m leaving. I can’t bear to
be in your presence for a minute longer.’ She turned towards the door.
‘Stephanie!’ He called out to
her as she had her hand on the door handle. ‘Wait.’
She stood motionless, with her
back towards him—too enraged to face him.
‘This is stupid,’ he said. ‘We
shouldn't be shouting at each other like this.’
She turned towards him, daring
to believe that he might have acknowledged his mistake.
‘You have to understand why I
didn’t want to see Alice,’ he continued. ‘You're the best person to explain it
to her. I have a new life now. It would do none of us any good now to open up
old wounds.’
‘Oh don’t give me that!’
Stephanie shook her head. ‘Alice always has been, and always will be, a part of
your life. You just have to face up to the responsibility of being a parent.
You can't just close the door on her!’
‘It's awkward,’ he said, weakly.
She let go of the door handle
and frowned. ‘What's awkward? Are you afraid that I'll make problems for you
and Miranda? Is that it? Is that why you didn't want me to meet her today?’
‘No,’ he said, avoiding her
eyes.
‘I don't care about you and
Miranda. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since we were together. I
really don’t care about you anymore, Roger—sorry, Ken, or whatever your name
is. I stopped caring about you when you walked out on me and Alice, twenty
years ago; when you left us alone. I don’t care what you do. All I’m concerned
about is Alice. She wanted to meet her father. She was so excited when she
found out where you live. She imagined you would welcome her with open arms,
and offer to make up for all the lost years. But, no—you just treated her like
a stranger, huh, worse than a stranger. She is so upset.’