‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Did I tell you about the time I took your dad to the races?’
With immaculate timing, my car overheated on the motorway, forty miles from London. Lily was surprisingly sanguine about it. In fact, she was curious. ‘I’ve never been in a car that broke down. I didn’t know they even did that any more.’
At this statement my jaw dropped (my dad would regularly pray loudly to his old van, promising premium petrol, regular tyre-pressure checks, endless love, if she would make it back home again). Then she told me her parents traded up their Mercedes every year. Mostly, she added, because of the level of damage done to the leather interior by her half-brothers.
We sat by the side of the motorway, waiting for the breakdown truck to arrive, and feeling the little car judder sporadically as the lorries rumbled past. Eventually, deciding it would be safer for us to be out of the car, we scrambled up the embankment at the side of the motorway and sat on the grass, watching as the afternoon sun lost its heat and slid down the other side of the motorway bridge.
‘So who is Martin?’ I said, when we had exhausted all breakdown-related conversation.
Lily plucked at the grass beside her. ‘Martin Steele? He’s the man I grew up with.’
‘I thought that was Francis.’
‘No. Fuckface only came into the picture when I was seven.’
‘You know, Lily, you might want to stop calling him that.’
She gave me a sideways look. ‘Okay. You’re probably right.’ She lay back on the grass, and smiled sweetly. ‘I’ll call him Penisfeatures instead.’
‘Let’s stick with Fuckface then. So how come you still visit him?’
‘Martin? He’s the only dad I really remember. Mum got together with him while I was small. He’s a musician. Very creative. He used to read stories and stuff and make up songs about me, that kind of thing. I just …’ She trailed off.
‘What happened? Between him and your mum?’
Lily reached into her bag, pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. She inhaled and let out a long flute of smoke, almost dislocating her jawbone in the process. ‘I came home from school one day with the au pair and Mum just announced that he’d gone. She said they’d agreed he had to go because they weren’t getting on any more.’ She inhaled again. ‘Apparently he wasn’t interested in her personal growth or he didn’t share her vision of the future. Some bullshit. I think she just met Francis and knew Martin was never going to give her what she wanted.’
‘Which was?’
‘Money. And a big house. And the chance to spend her day shopping and bitching to her friends and aligning her chakras or whatever. Francis earns a fortune doing private bank things in his private bank with all the other private bankers.’ She turned to me. ‘So, basically, one day Martin was my dad – I mean, I called him Daddy right up until the day he left – and the next he wasn’t. He used to take me to nursery and primary school and everything – and then she decides she’s had enough of him, and I get home and he’s just … gone. It’s her house, so he’s gone. Just like that. And I’m not allowed to see him and I’m not even allowed to talk about him because I’m just dredging things up and being difficult. And obviously she is in so much pain and emotional distress.’ Here Lily did a scarily good impression of Tanya’s voice. ‘And when I really did get mad at her, she told me there was no point in getting so upset because he wasn’t even my real dad. So that was a nice way to find out.’
I stared at her.
‘And the next thing, there’s Francis turning up at our door, all over-the-top bunches of flowers and so-called family days out, where I’m basically playing gooseberry and sent off with the nannies while they’re all over each other at some child-friendly luxury hotel. And then six months later she takes me to Pizza Express. I think it’s some treat for me and that maybe Martin is coming back, but she says she and Francis are getting married and it’s wonderful and he’s going to be the most wonderful daddy to me and I “must love him very much”.’
Lily blew a smoke ring up into the sky, watching as it swelled, wavered and evaporated.
‘And you didn’t.’
‘I hated him.’ She looked sideways at me. ‘You can tell, you know, when someone’s just putting up with you. Even if you’re little. He never wanted me, only my mother. I can sort of understand it – who wants another man’s kid hanging around? So when she had the twins they sent me away to boarding-school. Bang. Job done.’
Her eyes had filled with tears and I wanted to reach out to her, but she had wrapped her arms around her knees and stared straight ahead. We sat there in silence for a few minutes, watching the traffic start to build below us as the sun slid further down the sky.
‘I found him, you know.’