Page 1 of Never Tear Us Apart
Chapter One
Wednesday 18thJune 2025, 2.45 p.m.
‘Slow down, Maia,’ Dad says.
I speed up a little. We are arguing. Of course we are arguing – we are together: a rare occurrence that never ends well. The hire car has air conditioning, but my father insists on having the windows down, allowing the afternoon heat to swell into every crevice. Sweat trickles down my back from the nape of my neck. My thighs stick to the faux-leather trim. I should have coughed up for a better car.
‘Dad, I’m not even over the speed limit,’ I tell him, nodding at the dash, as I expertly take a hairpin bend of the road from Sliema to Mdina. The roads are lined with prickly pear trees. Wildflowers burst into random riots of fleeting colour, lighting up the dry and dusty landscape. ‘I’ve driven in the Alps, in Ukraine, in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gobi Desert. I’ve driven inParis. I know how to drive.’
‘You don’t know to drivehere,’ he insists.
‘Here? You haven’t been to Malta for . . . what, thirty years? Everything has changed while you weren’t looking, Dad. Amazingly, the world keeps going even when you aren’t around.’
‘Again, with the complaints.’ He sighs. ‘I don’t know why I thought this would work.’
Thethishe is referring toisus: father and daughter together on a tour of the place where my dad, the great artist himself, David Borg, was born: the island of Malta.Thiswas supposed to be our last great hope of having some kind of functioning relationship. No, scratch that – some kind,anykind of love.
‘No matter how you feel about me and my numerous failings, you are still driving too fast for this road. You will kill us both.’ He gestures, one arm extending out of the open window, rolling his head back against the headrest. ‘I suppose then at least this torture will be over.’
At this, I pull over into a narrow lay-by. The red Prius that was behind us shoots past. I grip the steering wheel hard with both hands, taking a deep, steadying breath. I swore on my twenty-first birthday that I would not let him make me cry again. More than a decade on, I mean to keep that promise.
I turn to him when I’m sure I have my feelings under control once again. ‘Why did you even suggest this trip?’
He crosses his arms and looks out of the window.
‘Dad, if this is torture for you, then I’ll take you back to the hotel and get a flight back to my life. Because I promise you, visiting Malta for the first time with the father I haven’t spoken to for six years was not on my to-do list. So why put both of us through it?’
‘You know why,’ he says bitterly.
‘I thought I knew why,’ I tell him. ‘I thought you had finally realised that life is short, that yours is almost over, and that now would be a good time to try to build a relationship with the daughter you abandoned, before it’s really too late. That’s what I thought when you called me out of the blue. You told me you wanted to take me to the island where you were born, to show me the places you knew and to introduce me to the relatives I’ve never met. I thought maybe you wanted to explain whyyou insisted Mum call me Maia, even though that’s the only direct bit of parenting you have ever done.’
Three more cars whip by, and I wish I was in any one of them, speeding away from this moment. A lorry rattles past so fast and loud it makes me start.
‘This is not a good place to stop,’ Dad mutters.
‘You called, and I came running, like I always do when you dangle me any sort of promise, even though Iknowyou will break it. Because, despite it all, despite everything you have done or not done, I always hope we might . . .’
I can’t finish the sentence, because I don’t know what I hope, only that I do.
‘You are your mother’s daughter,’ he says. ‘You want to talk, to go over and over the past. You want reasons; you want apologies. You can’t let it rest and move on.’
‘I want to try tounderstand,’ I cry, hearing the break in my voice and reining it in. ‘I want to know you, before it’s too late.’
‘I’m eighty-eight,’ Dad tells me. ‘And in excellent health. I’m not dead yet.’
‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘There’s still time to make amends.’
‘For what?’ he demands.
‘Oh, I don’t know. How about leaving me to fend for myself for starters . . . ?’
‘I never wanted children,’ Dad says, his tone heating up now. ‘I told your mother that when we married. She was thirty or so; I was in my fifties. I said, I do not want children. I told her that my first two wives left me because I didn’t want children, even though I had made it clear right at the start. Women always think they can change you. She promises me it doesn’t matter to her, and then she is pregnant despite my wishes. She leaves me foryou.’
Every time I resolve not to give my father another chance to reject me, I fail. All I can do now is damage limitation.
‘Right.’ I check my wing mirror for traffic and indicate to pull out. ‘Look, I know this trip was Vanessa’s idea. I know she’s always wanted you to try to build some kind of relationship with me. Vanessa is a nice woman. It consistently amazes me how you get nice women to marry you so frequently, but anyway . . . It’s not going to work. You tried your best. You can go back to Vanessa and tell her you tried. You can live out the rest of your days with your fourth wife and a clear conscience. I’m taking you back to the hotel and I’m going back to London.’
‘It’s for the best,’ he says with a shrug.
