Читать книгу The Liar’s Daughter - Claire Allan - Страница 8

I first met Joe when I was seven years old. He was already sitting at the table in Fiorentinis Ice Cream Parlour on the Strand Road, looking around him at the old photos and pictures on the wall, when my mother and I arrived.

‘I’ve someone I’d like you to meet,’ my mother had said.

I remember that she looked happy. That her eyes seemed to sparkle. She’d put on make-up and I could smell she was wearing her favourite perfume – the kind she saved for special occasions. She’d even let me have a little spritz on my wrists. I remember that I was happy for her. Her excitement was contagious and yes, I was a little nervous, too. But that was okay, my mother had told me. It’s okay to feel nervous about meeting new people.

I liked the cocooned world my mother and I shared. Just the two of us, with Granny and Grandad popping in occasionally to check on us. To fuss. To ask if we had everything we needed. My mother’s response was always the same. ‘Sure we have each other and that’s all that we need,’ she’d smile.

My grandmother’s eyes would tighten so that I could see the fine lines of wrinkles spread out across her face. ‘You know I worry,’ she would say.

‘There’s no need to,’ my mother would reply.

And there wasn’t. We were happy. We had what we needed. A small house with a garden big enough to play in. Food in the cupboards. And if I needed new shoes or a new school coat, or sometimes just because Mum thought we deserved a treat, she would reach into the tin tea caddy on the top shelf of the corner cupboard in the kitchen, lift out some money and treat us.

Occasionally, the topic of my father would come up. Usually around Father’s Day, or after we’d watched some schmaltzy family movie. My mother would tell me, as gently as she could, that my father had moved away before I’d been born. ‘He wasn’t ready to be a daddy just yet,’ she’d say, and sometimes there would be a sadness in her eyes about it. ‘But that was everything to do with him and nothing to do with you,’ she’d tell me.

I suppose I knew she was lonely sometimes. She would read romance novels and sigh, and I knew most of my friends had both their parents living together. I suppose it was understandable my mother might want to find a partner too, even if she said that we had all we needed to be happy between the pair of us.

But if I was nervous that day in Fiorentinis, it was nothing compared to how nervous this man, Joe, appeared to be. He was fidgeting in his seat and, as he stood up to say hello, he almost knocked over his teacup.

I was as shy then as I am now. I stayed close to my mother, my hand gripped in hers, my cheek pressed against the soft fabric of her coat.

‘Heidi, this is Joe,’ she said. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’

The man smiled, extended his hand towards mine. Dark hairs crawled from the cuff of his jacket. They looked like spiders. I cuddled in closer to my mother.

‘Heidi, say hello,’ she said, an urgency in her voice.

He withdrew his hand and sat down. ‘She doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want to. Isn’t that right, Heidi? I’m a little nervous, too.’ His smile was kind.

The tightness in my chest eased as he lifted his teacup and sipped from it. I dared to take a step away from the safety of my mother’s long, green woollen coat.

‘I know it’s cold and rainy outside, but maybe you’d like an ice cream anyway? Since we’re here?’ he asked.

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Heidi?’ My mother’s voice was more relaxed again, too.

I nodded.

‘How about we get them to make you the biggest ice cream they’ve got?’ he asked and my eyes widened at the thought. There was little that seven-year-old me loved more than ice cream.

‘With jelly?’ I asked, because jelly came a close second.

‘Lots of jelly,’ Joe said with a wink, and I smiled at him and then at my mother.

The smile on my face was mirrored on her own. Then I noticed how she looked at him. How her smile was different when she was smiling in his direction. It was how those men and women smiled at each other on the front covers of her romance novels. She was falling in love. I knew it at once.

It was only when he came back from ordering and reached out to hand me the giant ice cream he was carrying that I noticed the glint of a gold ring on his finger.

I may have been only seven, but I knew what that meant. And I also knew he wasn’t married to my mother. He was grinning at me. Telling me he asked for extra sprinkles. I could sense Mum beaming at him from beside me. I knew she wanted me to smile, so I did. I remembered my manners just like I’d always been taught, and I thanked him and ate the ice cream. I pretended it didn’t suddenly taste a little sour.