The Skeleton Tree by Diane Janes (reading women TXT) 📕

‘Well, that’s very nice for you,’ said Bruce. It was the voice he used for waiters or petrol pump attendants who tried to strike up a conversation with him. He stood up and left the room.

To Wendy, his exit seemed both dignified and tragic. As the door closed behind him she turned on Tara. ‘Why did you do that? How did you do it? Who gave you the number?’

‘No one gave me the number. I heard Grandma Burton saying years ago that he’d moved somewhere just south of Birmingham. I knew from my birth certificate that his initials are R.G. All I had to do was pop into Stockton Library. I went last week. They’ve got phone books for the whole country there. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes.’

‘But to announce it just like this. Can’t you see how much you’ve hurt your father … Bruce. It’s like a betrayal, Tara, don’t you see that? Good God, it’s so, so ungrateful.’ And earlier that day, Wendy thought, when Tara was asking about Robert, she already had his phone number.

‘I didn’t realize it was gratitude he wanted,’ Tara snapped back. ‘For taking on poor little orphan Annie.’

‘You’ve hurt him,’ Wendy persisted.

‘What about Robert, my real father? Don’t tell me he hasn’t been hurt. Don’t try to tell me he doesn’t care about me, because I’ve spoken to him. Did you know that he has photographs of me? That he’s always wanted to see me? Do you know what his first words to me were? “Tara,” he said. “Is it really you? This is wonderful.” That’s the word he used. “Wonderful”. He wants me to go and stay with them. Next weekend. He says he can’t wait to meet me.’

Wendy cut short the flow. ‘That’s out of the question. You’re not going. He has no right—’

‘He has every right. And so do I. He’s my father and you can’t stop me. I’m eighteen in a couple of weeks.’

Wendy was unused to dealing with outright rebellion. She stood up abruptly and went in search of reinforcements. She found Bruce sitting in the kitchen, the crossword spread out in front of him. He was using a pencil which she recognized as one of Katie’s. It was topped with a miniature horse’s head, fashioned in pastel-coloured plastic, from which a straggle of nylon mane was dangling. The scene looked ridiculous, not least because Bruce never did the crossword.

‘Bruce, will you please come and help me talk to Tara? She’s got some ridiculous idea into her head about going to spend the weekend with …’ She hesitated, not wanting to say ‘her father’. ‘With Robert.’

Bruce didn’t look up. ‘Has he invited her?’ His enquiry implied a complete lack of interest.

‘Apparently.’

‘Then she may as well go. She’d better find out where he lives and check the times of the trains.’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous, she can’t possibly go.’

‘I don’t see how you can stop her.’

Wendy stood for a moment, struggling to gain control of her feelings. Being confronted by the same truth from two separate parties was not helping.

Eventually she said, ‘I don’t want her to go.’

Bruce raised his head and regarded her with an expression she could not read. ‘Don’t be childish, Wendy. If she wants to go, I don’t see any problem with it.’

‘Me be childish! Who was it went sulking out of the door the minute Robert’s name was mentioned?’

‘I was not sulking. I don’t happen to think that this has anything to do with me. It’s between you, Tara and her father.’

‘You’re her father.’

‘No, Wendy, Robert is her father.’

‘This is ridiculous. We’re going round in circles.’

‘Shut up then,’ he snapped.

‘Bruce, you don’t seem to understand what is happening.’

‘Wendy, will you kindly stop screaming at me? Tara wants to spend a weekend with her father. It’s perfectly reasonable that she should. He’s not a child molester, is he? The more you carry on and make a thing of it, the more determined she is going to become. It’s hardly surprising that she’s curious and wants to see him. And she’s very nearly eighteen years old, which is quite old enough to make a journey by herself.’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Then what is the point? You say you don’t want her to go. Why not? You say you don’t want her to meet her own father – again, why not? Surely that’s a decision for Tara? I think you’ve created this fantasy in which he’s the big, bad wolf, which in reality he’s not. He’s just some ordinary bloke who’d like to see his daughter.’

‘So you’re on his side.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake! I’m not on anybody’s side.’

In the days that followed, however, it felt very much to Wendy as if Bruce was on Tara’s side. It was Bruce who paid Tara’s train fare, Bruce who offered to run her to the station, and Bruce who gave her extra pocket money for the trip. In the meantime, Wendy reluctantly adopted his advice, affecting to pretend that she did not mind about the trip, ignoring Tara’s air of smugness in arranging it all, while pondering on the way in which, over a period of years, Tara must have hoarded the information that had helped her to find Robert.

It was arranged that Tara would travel down on Friday evening, catching the 18.33 from Darlington. When Jamie announced that he wanted to go to the station and see the trains, Katie hadn’t wanted to be left behind, so in the end the whole family had piled into the car to see Tara off, just as they had done in the past when she was heading off on school trips to France and the Lake District.

It had proved unexpectedly difficult to explain Tara’s destination to Jamie. ‘If Robert is Tara’s other daddy, he must be my other daddy too. Why can’t I go and see him?’

Katie had been more interested in the news that Tara’s other daddy had children, and on learning from Tara that these children were of a