Free The Good Father by Marion Husband Page A

It certainly struck me as such as I drove Hope to the party. And the drawing itself is silly – why would a sixteen-year-old girl want such a thing? As I desperately hunted for something to say, I couldn’t help taking my eyes off the road to glance at her from time to time. I thought how lovely she looked in her pretty party dress. She wore a necklace around her slender neck that had belonged to her mother Carol. More and more these days, she looks like her mother. She has the same quiet determination, too; I remember that Carol was always very single-minded in getting her own way.
    At last, laughing inanely, I said, ‘Do you think there’ll be jelly and ice cream, or canapés?’
    She gazed out of the window. ‘I don’t know.’
    Blundering on, I said, ‘Perhaps there’ll be champagne.’
    I was ignored. She was resolutely turned away from me, her hands clasping the neatly-wrapped present on her lap. Her hands are very small and white, her fingernails short and round and pink as the inside of shells.
    I said, ‘What did you buy her?’
    â€˜Chocolates.’ She looked down at the gift, smoothing the wrapping paper before turning back to the car window. After a moment she said, ‘Milk Tray.’
    Her necklace was a silver crucifix, the tiny figure of Christ suffering at her throat. Her fingers went to it as if to check that the crucified figure faced outwards, a nervous gesture that made my heart ache with sympathy for her. I know how shy she is, like me, know how difficult it would be for her to walk into a room full of people like the Redmans. I’m afraid I allowed my sympathy for her to run away with me because I said clumsily, ‘You look lovely, Hope, there’s no need to feel awkward . . .’
    She glanced at me, a sharp, frowning look, only to look away again.
    Of course, I couldn’t take the hint and be quiet. I was too full of the idea that I could somehow make her feel less nervous, a near evangelical zeal to make her understand that I empathised with her. Too fervently, I said, ‘You imagine that you’ll say or do something foolish, but you won’t. You are young and lovely and charming –’
    â€˜Could you stop, please. I can walk from here.’
    I looked at her in surprise, already slowing the car for a red light. As we came to a stop she opened the car door. ‘Thank you for the lift.’
    â€˜Hope –’
    She turned to me. ‘It’s not far from here, I can walk.’
    â€˜No.’ Dismayed, I caught her arm to prevent her from getting out of the car. ‘I promised Jack I’d see you safely there.’
    She pulled back from me as though desperate to get away. The lights had changed to green; the driver behind me honked his horn. Hope jumped from the car and began to walk quickly. Crossing the junction, I pulled the car into the side of the road and got out to stand in front of her.
    Hope stopped, then made to walk round me. Following her, I said, ‘Hope, please get back in the car and let me take you to the party as I promised Jack.’
    â€˜I’d rather walk.’ She looked at me with the kind of insolent dislike I’d seen so often before on the faces of her schoolmates. She might just as well have slapped me for the pain it caused. I stepped back from her, that familiar sense of humiliation having its usual, shaming effect. I smiled, and it was the kind of creeping, ingratiating smile one gives to bullies, even though this was Hope. Through the pain I felt an even greater sense of shame that she could make me feel so abject.
    She moved past me and all I could do was watch her walk away.
    Late afternoons have always been the worst time of day for me, the time when I can no longer concentrate enough to work and the evening stretches out ahead of me, time I have to somehow fill with reading, or listening to the wireless, passive pastimes that make me feel as though