Katie

 

It was that same snooty receptionist at the Stroud office, the same one who’d judged me on interview day and found me severely lacking in my bite me, baby t-shirt. She didn’t give me any such look this morning, not in my posh little suit and my posh little heels.

“David Faverley,” I said, and my tone was confident, demanding.

She dialled him without hesitation. “Mr Faverley, your daughter for you.” A pause. “No, sir. Miss Smith…”

She gave me a smile as she disconnected.

“He’ll send someone right down.”

“I’ll find him.”

She didn’t even try to stop me.

I checked out my reflection in the elevator mirrors, so different than the girl who’d stared back at me last time around. Had I really changed so much? Inside as well as out?

I wasn’t sure anymore. Wasn’t sure of anything. I took a breath and willed my heart to calm itself the hell down as the doors pinged open, and I was back on the executive floor, back amongst director’s offices and board level meeting rooms and all that crap.

Another of the neck scarf brigade was heading down the hallway. “Miss Smith, I was just on my way. Your father is right down the hall, on the left. I’ll take you.”

“No need,” I said, and I was off.

I found his office right on the end. Mr David C. Faverley. CEO.

I knocked once before I opened the door, took one last deep breath before I pushed my way into his office like a bull entering a china shop.

He didn’t even have time to stand. No time to greet me.

“I know,” I said. “I know my mum lied. I know she told you I was… aborted. I know you didn’t know about me.”

His face turned pale, so pale.

Just like I imagined mine had.

Just like my mum’s had.

“Katie… good Lord, I…” He gestured for me to take a seat. Picked up his phone, dialled out with a cough. “Cancel everything for today… yes everything… I don’t care, he’ll have to wait… thank you.” He put the phone down.

I stared out of his window, and the sky was blue. Just a smattering of cloud. Just a nice normal summer’s day.

He coughed again. “Was this… your mother? Did she…”

I shook my head. “Carl.”

He nodded, just a little. “Carl, yes. Of course.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “You could have told me.”

He held out his hands. “Your mother was worried about the effect it would have on you. She didn’t want to dwell on the past, she was adamant, right from the off. She said we should start afresh, so as not to confuse you any more than absolutely necessary.” He sighed. “I respected that.”

“Why did you respect that? She lied to you, for more than a decade.”

“Because I respected your mother, Katie. I respected her judgement. I still do.”

I couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Is that why you fired her? Cast her aside like a stray dog? Was that your respect?”

“It was never like that.” He looked right at me. “I made mistakes. I didn’t do right by your mother, Katie. Lord knows I didn’t, and Lord knows I regret it, but with you…” He paused. “I would have been there for her, I would have been there for you. But it was too late. I’d already done the damage.” He put his head in his hands. “I loved your mother, with God as my witness, I loved your mother dearly, but I’d lost the fight. It was over for her.”

“You didn’t fight very hard, Dad. Not for love. Not for the baby she was carrying!”

“She told me it was too late.” His eyes were so sad. “Told me she wanted nothing to do with me.”

“And you accepted that?” I tried not to glare at him.

“Things were difficult enough at home. I had the boys and Olivia was carrying Verity. I tried to make the best choices, but everything I did was wrong, Katie. I was wrong to try again with Olivia, I was wrong to cast out your mother, I was wrong to accept her word about the termination, knowing she’d already lied to me once about you.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“She left without telling me she was pregnant. Not a single word on the subject. I found out through a friend of hers.”

“And she told you it was too late?”

“Yes, she told me it was too late. And I believed her.”

I met his eyes, and he was telling the truth. I could feel my own emotions, bubbling around, but I kept breathing, kept my cool. “Mum loved you.”

“And I loved her.”

“But you were still sleeping with your wife? You must have been.”

He shook his head. “It was once. One last ditch attempt at salvaging something for the boys.”

“Convenient,” I scoffed.

“I don’t expect you to believe me.”

“I don’t know what to believe.” I took a steadying breath. “I thought I knew everything, thought I understood everything, but I didn’t. I don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

I smiled, fought back the tears in my eyes. “Yeah, you and everyone else.”

“I should have told you.”

“Yes, you should. Maybe things could have been different. Maybe we’d have had more of a chance.” I sighed. “I never gave you a chance. I never had reason to give you a chance.”

“That’s my own fault,” he said. “I handled it all wrong. I know that now.” He looked straight at me, eyes glassy. “I was just so… overwhelmed. I treated the situation like I treated everything in life, just dived right in, tried to make the best of it, but it was the wrong call.”

“I didn’t belong there… not with you… not ever…”

“You did, Katie,” he said. “I just handled it so badly you didn’t feel like you belonged there.”

“Maybe you think so,” I scoffed. “But not Verity! Not Olivia! Not the boys!” I wiped away the threatening tears. “They hated me!”

He held up his hands. “And that was my fault, too. I didn’t prepare them, didn’t warn them, just tried to throw you all together. They were as shocked as you were, as shocked as I was.”

“But I wasn’t mean! I wasn’t spiteful and nasty and cruel.”

“I didn’t know how hard they were making things,” he said. “Not until it was too late. By then you didn’t want to know them, didn’t want to know me.” He reached out his hands. “I couldn’t reach you, Katie.”

“You didn’t try!”

“You wouldn’t let me.”

And he was right, I wouldn’t let him. It would have been too little, too late.

“This is all fucked up,” I said. “The whole sorry fucking thing.”

He sighed. “No, Katie. It only feels like that. This could be the beginning. The new beginning.” He reached his hands further across the desk. “That’s what I want. More than anything. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

“We don’t know each other…”

“We can get to know each other. Slowly, this time. Like it should have been, Katie. Just you and me.”

“I don’t know…”

“You’re here aren’t you? That’s a start…”

I shrugged. “So much bad feeling… so much unnecessary bad feeling.”

“It doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t have to matter now.”

“You could have been with my mum,” I said. “If you loved her.”

He sighed again. “Love is complicated, Katie. I loved your mother so much it took my breath, but I loved Olivia, too. She was the mother of my boys, a good woman, a woman I could depend on.” His shoulders were tense. So tense. “I know you may not see them like that, but Olivia and Verity are good people. They are just very insecure, very highly strung. They have a more prickly heart. Not like your mother, and not like you, either.”

“Is that a compliment?”

He smiled. “You’ve always made me so proud, Katie, from the very first moment I saw you. I just regret you never got to realise.”

Tears pricked, but I didn’t let them fall. “This has to be slow,” I said. “I just… I don’t know how this could even work… after all this time…”

“However you want it to. You call the shots. Not like last time, this time it’s all at your pace, Katie, whatever you want.”

“I didn’t think you gave a shit last time.”

“You have no idea how much I gave a shit. No idea at all.” His words were raw and choked.

I felt awkward again, scratchy in my suit, small in the big leather swivel chair. “I’d better go,” I said. “I told Carl I’d only be an hour.”

He smiled. “I hear how well you’re doing. I check in every day.”

“I know,” I said. “He tells me.”

“He does?”

“I’d better go.” I got to my feet, held out a hand, and it felt stupid. He took it anyway. “I’m sorry,” I said. “For my part. For not giving you a chance.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing. The apology is all mine.” He squeezed my hand so tight. “I’m sorry, Katie.”

My breath was sore in my chest. I nodded. Smiled. Shook his hand.

And then I pulled away, walked to the door, brushed aside a tear before I stepped into the corridor, but there were footsteps, a hand on my arm.

“Katie…” he said, and then he didn’t say anything at all. He pulled me into him, and held me tight, and I was so rigid, so scared. “I am so sorry. I’m sorry about your mother, I’m sorry for what I did, I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

I nodded, held my breath to stop the tears.

“I love you, Katie, you’re my daughter. I always loved you.”

And I couldn’t say it back. No matter how much I wanted to, no matter how much I wanted to believe him, wanted to believe I had a dad, and that that dad loved me, had always loved me. No matter how much my heart thumped in my chest and my stomach pained with all the hurt and all the forgotten dreams, I just couldn’t say it back.

I didn’t know him enough to love him.

Didn’t know him at all.

But maybe one day.

I wrapped my arms around my father’s shoulders, and I stayed there, just long enough to count.

And that would have to be enough.

For today.

 

The tears pricked again as I pulled up outside the Cheltenham office, and underneath them my thoughts were all fucked up. Sadness, and shock, and a glimmer of hope.

And anger. There was anger there.

Not at my mum, who’d done her best despite a few wrong calls. Not even at my dad, who’d let her down and made a few wrong calls of his own. Epic style.

My anger was at Verity.

The cold steely determination in my belly turned hot, and it spat and spluttered. Maybe if she hadn’t been so cruel. Maybe if she hadn’t made me feel so worthless, so unwelcome. Maybe then, I’d have been able to stay, just enough to get to know him, just enough to know he didn’t hate me.

Maybe things would have been different.

I sighed to myself. What did that really matter now?

I breathed out all my hurt, all my anger, breathed out all the bitterness and confusion, and fear. And what was left was me, just me, the same me I’d always been.

Except now I knew the truth.

Finally, after all this time, and all this hurt, I knew the truth.

Carl pulled me aside on my way in, but I shook my head.

“I’m alright,” I said, and brushed his hand from mine. “I’m good.”

“What did he say?”

“Lots,” I shrugged. “Nothing. Everything.”

“Want to go talk?” His eyes were so hard on mine.

I shook my head again. “I want to work, Carl. I need the headspace.”

He nodded. “Alright, Katie, whatever you want. I’m right here.”

“I know,” I said, and I did know.

I hammered the fuck out of my calls that afternoon. I was on a mission, consumed by nothing other than the desire to forget it all and fly high on the leaderboard. I chased up all my prospects, closed everything I could into an opportunity, and those leads clocked up for me. Even Ryan looked confused.

“Who put the steam in your kettle today?”

I shrugged. “Just my lucky day, I guess.”

He reached out to me, pretended to bathe in my glory. “I hope it’s contagious.”

“If this is luck, you’re welcome to it,” I said, and gave his arm a friendly slap.

I was making a coffee when Verity clacked her way into the kitchen behind me. My skin prickled. Wondering what she knew. Wondering what she’d heard. Wondering if she knew anything at all.

She appeared at my side, reached up for a coffee mug, and she was stewing, I could tell.

“Hey, Katie,” she said, like she ever made casual conversation. She turned around, leaned against the counter, looking anywhere but at me. “I know we don’t… speak.”

No shit.

“…but I just wanted to…” She sighed. “Good leads today. So many of them.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’ve been meaning to say. For a while. You, uh, you sure know how to make those calls.”

I didn’t even know how to reply.

Her earrings sparkled under the florescent light, and so did her lip gloss. She was so preened, so perfect, so stylish and groomed and well-fucking-educated.

But she was nervous, a little bit hollow. She felt like glass. I could tell.

“Look, Katie, I, um…”

“You, um?”

She shot me a half smile, like she was crazy and she knew it.

“Ruth and Sharon and I are meeting up at Cheltenham Chase, before the event kicks off. I was wondering if you would… if you wanted to… I dunno… meet us? I have a spare trailer, if you…”

“I have my own trailer,” I said.

And she looked disappointed, like I’d lashed out and stamped on her olive branch. It felt so surreal.

She pinked up, and shrugged. But she wasn’t hostile. She didn’t attack.

“Ok,” she said. “Well, I guess we’ll see you there. Dad’s coming. Seb and Dommie, too. And Mum.”

I watched in silence as she made her coffee, dumbfounded beyond coherent speech. She dropped the teaspoon in the sink and shot me a final look before she walked away.

“Hey, Verity,” I managed, as she reached the open door.

She turned, stared right back at me.

“Thanks,” I said. “For the offer.”

She shrugged, offered me a small smile. “No problem,” she said.