Page 80 of Never Tear Us Apart
‘Are you still in pain?’ I ask, when Vanessa has left.
‘Well, at my age, that’s a given,’ he replies. ‘Reminds you you’re still alive.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Look, for what it’s worth, Dad – that you even suggested this trip, it does mean a lot to me.’
‘It was Vanessa’s idea,’ Dad tells me, fixing me with his hooded eyes.
‘I know!’ I smile wanly. ‘But you went along with it when you didn’t have to, and that counts for something. You wanted to try. That means a lot.’ I pause for a moment, trying to findexactly the right words for what I want to say. ‘I used to think that it was your fault, our terrible relationship,’ I tell him. ‘And then for a long time, I felt like it had to be my fault, like I wasn’t good enough or interesting enough . . .’
‘Maia . . .’ he begins.
‘No, let me finish.’ I sit down next to him, taking his hand. ‘It’s no one’s fault. We are both victims of circumstances that were outside our control. We both lost our mums; we have both had to fend for ourselves. It made us into people who found it hard to connect. So, I just wanted to say: I’m sorry about the crash, and I forgive you for not being the ideal dad. I hope you can forgive me.’
‘For what?’ he asks.
‘For anything and everything,’ I say. ‘And please know that I do love you. As best I can.’
Our eyes meet, and we hold that gaze for a long time, so long that his age melts away from his face and it’s David I’m sitting opposite, his small hand that I hold in mine.
‘Why do I feel like you’re saying goodbye forever?’ Dad asks me, puzzled.
‘Because I am,’ I confess. ‘I’m leaving here, Dad, and I’m not planning on coming back. If things go the way I hope, you will probably never hear from me again.’ I laugh wryly. ‘But I do hope that you will have a life better than you could once have imagined. I really do.’
‘Maia.’ Dad leans towards me. ‘You’re not making any sense. You aren’t planning to do anything stupid, are you?’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘No, I’m just planning to travel, to find myself – you know, the sort of hippy journey of discovery that Mum would have loved to have gone on.’
‘I did love your mother, you know, in my own way,’ Dad says. ‘When she died, I mourned her.’
‘I know,’ I say.
He doesn’t need to say more, I can feel everything in the slight squeeze of his hand and the look in the depths of his starlit eyes.
‘Goodbye, my girl,’ he says.
‘Goodbye, Dad,’ I say.
I get up to leave when he catches my hand.
‘Wait – I do have something for you,’ Dad says.
‘A parting gift?’ I laugh. What could he give me now when he never remembers my birthday?
‘In a way,’ he says. ‘A memory. It came to me in the night last night, as clear as if it happened just the day before and not eighty-three years ago.’
‘What memory?’ I ask.
‘You wanted to know why I named you Maia,’ Dad says. ‘Well, last night I remembered. It came back to me in a Technicolor rush, clear as Saturday-morning cinema. I was very small during the war, you see – so vulnerable, afraid most of the time, and often lost. Lost in this huge, grown-up thing that had nothing to do with me but that I couldn’t escape from.’
Drawing in a slow breath, I hold it and wait.
‘But there was this girl, a woman about your age now. For some reason, this young woman noticed me and singled me out for kindness. She was brave; she was gentle. She was a shelter to that little boy.’
‘She sounds pretty neat,’ I say, my voice barely more than a whisper.
‘Yes,’ Dad says. ‘Yes, and her name was Maia Borg.’
Chapter Fifty-Eight
