“What’s Peckham like?”
“Quite trendy. There are lots of little parks.”
“Do you have friends here?”
“No.”
Ripley leaned back. “Are you going to tell me who you were trying to avoid at the Tate?”
Fen hadn’t thought he’d ignore that. He could see no harm in telling some of the truth. “My father.”
Ripley made a sound of surprise. “Would he have recognised you?”
“I doubt it. Before you ask if he was a guest or a waiter, he was a guest. I assume he has some interest in Japanese ceramics and I’m rather disappointed. I don’t want to have anything in common with him apart from a few genes.”
“And you can’t even blame him for your BMD.”
“You reallydidread up about it.”
“Your mother is a carrier. Did she know?”
“No. She was an only child and her parents died when she was young.”
“Did she tell your father?”
“She told me she had.”
“Are you sure he doesn’t want to know you? Forgive me for suggesting this, but what if your mother wanted to keep him away from you?”
“She tried to contact him after I was born but he wasn’t interested.”
“So she said.”
Fen bit back his irritation. Ripley didn’t know his mother. “I tried when I was ten. Mum had just told me who he was. Up until then, she’d said he was dead. I didn’t know where he lived but I discovered he was working temporarily in Greenwich and went to speak to him. I had this idea that if he saw me and I told him who I was, he’d want to talk to me. I didn’t want anything from him. Not money or anything like that. Just acknowledgement. I honestly believed he’d be interested to meet me.”
He’d been so excited. Planned it all out. His father had been filming in the naval college. Fen had got close, managed to speak to one of the people on the set and pretended his sick mother was desperate for a picture of him with Jack Miller.
“I asked someone to tell him I wanted to speak to him. I waited all day. I eventually found out he’d long gone. I was upset but I convinced myself maybe the man I’d asked hadn’t even spoken to him. So I wrote a letter. I was careful. I didn’t say I was his son.”
“I bet that was tricky to write.”
“It took me ages. I used up a whole pad of writing paper. In the end, I lied. I told him I was doing a school project and asked questions that might have hinted as to who I was. I mentioned my mum.”
“Where did you send it if you didn’t know where he lived?”
“I knew a place that would send on any mail to him. At least I thought that was what would happen.”
“And did it?”
“A week later, a letter arrived. Inside the envelope was my letter and written across itDo not contact again.” His heart ached as he thought about it. “It was hand written so I think he wrote it. I never tried again. I don’t miss what I never had. Actually, that’s not true. I do. I miss not having had a dad, though I know it’s my idealised version of what a father should be.
“But my mum was and is wonderful. She did her best to ensure I never missed out. We weren’t well off and she did lots of odd jobs to earn money. Cleaning, sewing, childminding. She cooked cakes and biscuits for a local café. Some evenings, she worked in the local kebab shop. She wanted so much for me. When I…”
Fen’s throat closed up.
“When you what?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
