I wasn’t going to come out and say ‘sleeping with’ not to my dad. It was hard enough knowing that he’d done it even once, to get me. That he’d had not one but two women was unthinkable. Especially just then, sitting in his man shed and seeing him in his West Ham slippers and ‘Number One Dad’ T-shirt. A shirt, by the way, that I hadn’t bought him, he must have found it on sale and not bothered to read it. As with the ‘World’s Best Sister-in-Law’ mug he’d inexplicably bought himself.
‘Ah… right,’ he said, still looking longingly at the door. ‘Well… that is true.’
I’d assumed as much. Mum was keen on Richard and me staying together, but not so keen that she’d just make a story like that up. But it was good to have confirmation.
‘But she forgave you,’ I prompted.
‘She did, yeah.’ Dad squirmed in his chair and glanced at the TV as if Gary Lineker could phase through the screen and come to his aid. ‘What’s this about, love?’
‘Richard cheated on me,’ I said quietly, and that at last got Dad to look at me.
‘I’ll wring his neck,’ he said, sitting up straight. ‘That little scrote.’
‘Dad!’ I couldn’t help the giggle that escaped me at the outraged look on his face. ‘You cheated too.’
‘But that’s different. You’re my daughter,’ he huffed. ‘No one bloody cheats on my Tabby – I always had a bad feeling about that tosser. Right – when are you moving out? I’ll borrow Terry’s van. He won’t mind. He’s actually not legally allowed to drive since his last eye test. Bloody Asda opticians snitched on him.’
‘I’m actually not sure we’re breaking up,’ I said, holding up my hands to calm down his tirade. ‘I mean, I did break up with him but what Mum told me… it sort of convinced me to give him another chance.’
‘… oh,’ Dad subsided slightly. ‘Well… that’s… your choice. Though I’m surprised your mum told you about all that – it’s ancient history now.’
‘She said it didn’t seem important any more,’ I confirmed. ‘But… I don’t know how to feel about Richard right now. I wanted to ask you how you managed to get Mum back. How you stayed loyal all this time. Basically, see if it would help me understand how to deal with this.’
I had the sudden, horrible thought that he might be about to admit to me that he hadn’t been faithful at all and had in fact been carrying on a years-long affair. I didn’t want to know that and, frankly, if Mum found out, she’d probably cremate Dad on his own massive American barbecue and mix his ashes in with the gravel.
‘Well…’ Dad started, then stopped, apparently hunting for the right words. He looked at me quizzically as if I’d asked him to explain the offside rule. ‘We sort of just… moved on.’
Very helpful.
‘But what changed afterwards? What did you do?’ I asked, trying to herd him towards some specifics.
‘I can’t really say that much did change,’ Dad shrugged.
The TV emitted a roar of crowd noise and his head snapped round, having missed a goal entirely. He huffed.
‘Nothing changed?’ I asked, surprised. ‘At all?’
Dad turned back to me and sighed. ‘Tabby… it was all very different back then. We didn’t do all this talking stuff. I was drunk, I made a mistake and I regretted it. Your mum accepted my apology – and a few weeks of grovelling with flowers and chocolates – and we moved on. She knew that I wished it had never happened and that if Margaret and I hadn’t been drunk, it wouldn’t have.’
‘Margaret?’ I didn’t so much say the name as dry-heave it. That’s the trouble with living in a small town, you know everyone. And I only knew one Margaret. ‘You slept with Margaret… from the hospice shop?’
Dad turned the same shade of maroon as his slippers. ‘It was a long time ago! She used to be quite a looker.’
My bellyful of brunch churned around inside me. Ugh! That was so not a mental image I ever wanted to have. Dad and Margaret. Even back when I’d been in primary and she was the school receptionist, she’d had a tiny little cat-bum mouth all pursed up and mean, and wicked red talons which she filed endlessly. I couldn’t imagine her attracting a wasp, let alone my dad.
‘As I said,’ Dad continued, still flushed with embarrassment. ‘It was a house party, I’d just been paid and I was very, very drunk. I couldn’t remember my own name, let alone that I was head over heels for your mother. Margaret was hitting the advocaat pretty hard and, the minute we sobered up, I realised what I’d done and… honestly, I could have slapped myself into next week. I was that mortified, that scared I’d lose your mother… I had to tell her right away.’
‘You… told her?’ I was shocked. Mum hadn’t mentioned that. Come to think of it, I’d just sort of assumed that she’d found out from one of her legion of girlfriends.
‘Of course!’ Dad looked as surprised as I was that this detail hadn’t made it into the retelling. ‘I went straight round from dossing in the back room of that house. Stinking of beer, crying, I was a mess.’ He was flustered. Clearly, he hadn’t wanted to admit as much. ‘As soon as she answered the door, it all came out.’
‘You just blurted out that you’d cheated?’
‘No, I threw up in her Mum’s peonies,’ Dad said, with a rueful half-smile. ‘But the second thing I did was tell her what happened. She slammed the door in my face, then opened it again to tell me… well, let’s just say the air was pretty blue.’
‘And then what?’ I leant on the arm of my recliner, enthralled.
‘Well, then she went to tell her parents what happened and her dad, bloody hell, he was terrifying.’
