‘Do you want to sit for a while and talk it through? Georgia won’t be back until it’s time for us to visit her grandparents, so there’s plenty of time if you’d like.’
‘It’s not just Dad.’ Brianna slumps onto the kitchen chair beside her and props her chin up on her hands. ‘It’s loads of things. Exams. My auntie. I’ve got my driving test next week and I’ll need to do it in a car I don’t know because mine’s all smashed up. And Leon messaged me. I don’t know how I feel about that.’
Heather’s heart goes out to the girl. She opens a packet of the best biscuits which are saved for emergencies, and together they work their way through each of Brianna’s concerns. By the time they’re done, Brianna seems calmer and better able to cope with the demands of the important exams next week. They chat until Georgia comes home, full of talk about the coffee machine being on the blink again and how she’d expelled a drunken tourist from the pub with no support. She scans their faces after her initial information offload.
‘What’s up, mate?’ She puts a clumsy arm over Brianna’s shoulder, and her friend sinks into her armpit.
‘You know. Stuff.’
Georgia nods and allows her eyes to meet Heather’s. ‘Yep. Stuff. I get that.’ She twists and plants a kiss on Brianna’s forehead, which her best friend accepts with a smile.
‘Georgia. Can I ask you something?’ Heather is unsure if this is the best time to ask, but if Scott’s taught her anything, it’s that pussy footing around feelings and not exploring issues helps nobody.
Georgia looks up from examining Brianna’s hair.
‘Sure,’ she says.
‘Brianna and I have been chatting about lots of things, but also about things she wishes her dad had told her years ago. Do youhave questions about your childhood? Brianna kind of hinted that there might be things.’
Brianna glances at Georgia and whispers, ‘Sorry, mate.’
Georgia shrugs and adjusts her position on the sofa beside Brianna.
‘Well... I guess I’ve always wondered about my dad. Where he lives. What he’s like. If he ever thinks about me.’
Heather’s stomach plummets. These are things she’s wondered herself in the past.
‘You never said.’
Georgia nods slowly. ‘I know my dad’s the reason for your fight with Granny and Grandad. I didn’t want to make things worse.’
Guilt seizes Heather’s throat. She’s taken Georgia to see her parents three times now, and although they adore their granddaughter and revel in every single titbit of information she offers them about her life, the long-seated family tension is still apparent. The last time they’d visited, Heather and Georgia arrived bearing “gifts”. They returned Tiny the Gerbil and Polly the Cockatoo to their rightful owner – the man who’d mounted them. Heather’s dad held the Perspex boxes as though they were long forgotten friends. If he knew they were childhood pets of hers or that they’d been the initial cause of a near permanent rift between them, there was no acknowledgement.
Afterwards, however, when he was playing Georgia at chess – a grandfather-granddaughter game whilst Heather and her mother tidied up from their meal together – Heather had returned to the lounge to hear him muttering.
‘She might look like you, but she plays like him.’
They’d all stopped, dead in their tracks and asked him what he meant.
‘Nothing, nothing. Bed now,’ he'd said.
Heather and Georgia had left none the wiser. But they both acknowledged on the drive home that they’d thought of Georgia’s father, Dougie.
Now, the issue of Georgia’s father has reared its head once again. And this time Heather’s invited it in intentionally. She sits forward and grasps her daughter’s forearm.
‘I’m so sorry you feel like that. It can't be nice having these unanswered questions.’
‘We all have them. Me, Brianna, Trey. That’s why we were all drawn to the Genealogy Society, I guess.’
Heather thinks back to her very first meeting with Scott. How they’d both baulked at their daughters’ enthusiasm for the new club in September. But Trey as well? Never once has a precarious family history come up in her online communications with Bethany.
Georgia shrugs when she asks her to clarify.
‘He found something in his mum’s paperwork when he was looking for his birth certificate one time.’
‘Right.’
It’s none of Heather’s business what goes on in other families, but if hers is hurting, she needs to know.
