36

Sadie

AS IT GOES, I would rather have made myself a two-gallon cocktail of every stinking potion I’ve ever rubbed on Norman’s poor little body in the last ten years, stuck an umbrella in it and drunk it through a Marmite-dipped straw than endure another meeting with Adam Linley. But just when I’d been about to wheel out a barrow of lies and make a run for it from the pub, wouldn’t you know it, out of the blue he’d said he’d like to meet Norman.

“You know, just in case the kid really is mine. Probably is, too. I was pretty virile back then, if I do say so myself.”

Which he proceeded to do quite loudly, several more times. Throughout the course of our conversation in the pub he’d seemed to swing between totally obnoxious and oddly vulnerable, with not too much in between. It was confusing, to say the least, but either way, despite having softened slightly toward him since our initial sweaty exchange, I really didn’t want to have to think about the capabilities of what was (mercifully) hidden in the depths of those enormous pants. I’d tried to distract him with the story of Jax, the other possible fathers, the boys’ plan and why we were on this trip, but he wasn’t to be put off.

So now, in lieu of my preferred cocktail, here we were in the back corner of a coffee shop waiting for Adam Linley, extraordinary bore, sandwich-maker thief and possibly the father of my only son.

Basking in the aftermath of Leonard’s Chinese herbs, Norman looked lovely. There was a dusky pink hue to his face, and even though there were still more scabs than twenty-and fifty-pence-sized patches of new skin showing through, after the detritus he’d left on the sheets that morning the score was definitely evening out. But even though glass houses, raining stones and all that stuff, I was still nervous at the possibility of what might come out of Adam’s mouth when he saw Norman.

The night before, as I’d lain awake for hours with my son next to me shedding skin in his sleep, I’d thought about Adam and all the other mistakes I’d made thirteen years ago and tried to make some kind of sense of it. Which was an interesting experience, because it’s not something I’d ever tried to do before. Matter of fact, it was pretty much the exact opposite of anything I’d ever tried to do before.

When I’d arrived in Penzance with a two-week-old baby, a piece of paper with an estate agent’s number on it and not much else, I’d closed the door hard on my father’s grand finale and everything else that followed in those crazy few months back up in Edinburgh. I just got on with loving Norman, and that was more than enough to concentrate on. I told myself.

But lying in a hotel room halfway between back and beyond, I got to thinking about the stuff I’d left behind that door. The drinking, the blaming, the stupid, careless behavior, the willful and deliberate sabotage of the life my father had been so proud I was making for myself. And those tightly packed shelves of anger and resentment for the man who’d been my entire family. The man who made me the world’s best daughter then blew the world apart. The man who’d already hung around too long.