Work Text:
They can speak easily now. Or at least, more easily than ever before, when they hadn’t said a word for thirteen years. It’s not as awkward now that there’s an understanding between them, unspoken but tangible, something that says I’m ready to try. I’m ready to be better than I have been. It doesn’t quite erase the pain, doesn’t quite bury the alcoholism and the isolationism and the negligence, but it’s something. It’s all they have.
She’d never admit it out loud – she can barely admit it to herself – but all she’s wanted for as long as she can remember is a normal family.
It used to hurt, for reasons she didn’t have words for when she was young, seeing other children at Sports Day or class assembly or getting picked up from school, even, with their Mummies and Daddies smiling at them. Both together in a world Verity doesn’t even know how to start imagining it for herself. It probably says something about her, she thinks, that the closest friends she’s ever had have been ones whose parents are also fucked.
Phoebe doesn’t get it. But then, she’s never taken the time to really explain it to her. Something about watching her turn to her Mum for every little inconvenience makes Verity’s heart sink. It shouldn’t. She knows it shouldn’t. She’s pleased that Phoebe gets on with her family so well, that they visit each other all the time and that her Mum actually knows anything about her. But it causes a deep, selfish ache in Verity’s chest to see it happen. Because it’ll never happen for her.
Even now they’re on speaking terms, it’s just a handful of dirt on an open casket. Thirteen years don’t just vanish because you say sorry. There’s a childhood she never had, with Mum and Dad together to hold her hands in theirs. To keep her safe. There’s a childhood she mourns, sometimes, a girl who she never could have been. One trapped inside her, clutching at her ribs every time Phoebe runs straight back to her mother.
Verity knows she shouldn’t complain. She loves her Mum. Her Mum has done the best she can in a difficult situation, and Verity can hardly fathom how she stayed in contact with Dad all this time.
When she’s feeling particularly guilty, she knows in her heart that it’s for her. If she hadn’t been here, would Mum have ever spoken to Dad again? They get on well enough, now, but Verity can’t quite shake memories of their yelling rows. Even tiny, she had known her parents were wrong.
Now she’s bigger, she knows how hard it is. She can forgive that. People make mistakes. She’s made so many, and she can barely think of old boyfriends she’s strung along out of the guilt, let alone still wants to talk to them. Being an adult is harder to navigate than small minds can ever imagine, and it’s not the fact of incompatibility that she can’t forgive her parents for. It’s that they did it to her.
“Douglas Richardson?”
“Dad, it’s me.” Verity smiles. She knows his phone has caller ID, but she also knows how slowly he texts. The modern age seems just slightly out of his grasp.
“Verity. Are you alright?”
“Yeah. I just thought I’d call. It’s been a while.”
Two weeks is barely a while compared to the years she spent trying not to think about him at all. But letting herself mull on that one risks letting out bitter ghosts that want to stop her from talking to him at all. Ones that suggest she doesn’t need to rely on anyone except herself, that her Dad is going to let her down again at any second. They’re not telling the truth, but they still haunt her.
They can speak more easily now, but Verity cant help but feel like her guard is up. She’s alone in the flat. Phoebe’s at her boyfriends’, thank goodness, so there’s no way anyone is going to hear anything that Verity has to say except for her father. Not that Phoebe would be listening to her anyway. But Verity has never found it terribly easy to open herself up to people, let alone to her ex-estranged father.
He’s telling her about a flight they just got back from, to Osaka. It rained a lot, he says, so they spent all day in a sushi bar. He loves sushi. Verity smiles at this, imagining MJN damply inhaling salmon and wasabi. It’s raining here, too, but she doubts Manchester rain has anything in common with Japan. Manchester rain hangs heavy off the buildings and makes them fuzzy in the distance, like tall and faded gravestones.
Even though Dad has his job, which is his life, and MJN, who are like a surrogate family to him, Verity always gets the sense that he’s lonely. It’s partly why she likes to call him, sometimes. Just to check. Just to test that he’ll pick up. She doesn’t worry about Mum like this – Mum’s always had a booming social circle and a dazzling string of events that she flits between. Verity has often suspected that her mother’s life is more interesting than hers is.
But Dad doesn’t seem to have any other friends, not really. He always sounds so relieved when she calls. Like if she can forgive him, he can forgive himself too.
“Have you heard from Millie lately?”
“Yeah. She snapchats me a lot. She keeps sending pictures of drawings she’s doing.”
“She’s good, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, it’s nice to hear from her.”
That’s not a lie, not at all. But it is an oversimplification. Millie is so young, so full of life. Verity can barely remember being fourteen any more. It feels like so many lifetimes ago. She feels like she’s let her little sister down, in so many ways. There’s so many things she should have been there for, so many things that she could have helped Millie with. That’s another life that she mourns, sometimes, too. The one where she’s the older sister Millie deserves. She’s just glad that Millie wants her around at all now.
“I’m glad you two get on. She doesn’t talk to me as much as she used to. Not that I blame her. She’s a teenager now, and you know what that’s like. And I think she took it quite hard, the divorce. She’s not as resilient as you.”
Verity’s mouth goes dry. What the fuck does he want her to say to that? She takes a deep breath, her fist clenching on a reflex. He doesn’t mean anything by it, she knows that. Unless he does, of course. Unless he’s reminding her of the guilt they share on purpose, trying to make her feel bad for avoiding him for all those years, trying to garner some sympathy out of her for being the worst Dad she’s ever known.
That’s mean. But it’s true. He let her down when she could have needed him. He let her down and went off and had another kid, another daughter for whom he stopped drinking and remembered birthdays. He let her down and all he thinks is that it made her more resilient?
She doesn’t want to be bitter towards Millie. She loves her little sister. Millie reminds her of one of the ghosts of herself. The one where she remembers how to love other people openly, how to be cool and confident and kind. The Verity she is now is the one whose alcoholic Dad fucked off and left her suspicious and cold.
And that’s what she doesn’t know how to forgive.
“I do remember being fourteen,” she says, careful to keep her voice flat. She’s glad he can’t see her. The expression on her face would betray her coolness. She’s not feeling very cool about this at all.
How can he see that he hurt Millie, but not her? How dare he use her as an emotional support? He’s an adult, a real adult. Why can’t he find his own friends to give him absolution?
What could she have been if he had been there for her?
But she doesn’t say anything else, and the conversation moves on. Ten minutes later, she hangs up, with the cheeriest “Bye, Dad,” she can manage. She doesn’t reply when he says love you. She doesn’t really know how to.