Page 40 of Stuck

That didn’t mean that having her in my arms for the first time wasn’t like opening Pandora’s box. I rubbed what I hoped were comforting circles on her back and tried not to think about the familiar smell of her shampoo in her newly washed hair. The way she fitted against me, her head the perfect height to tuck under my chin, her shoulders just the right width for my arms to wrap completely around. The way she quieted in my embrace, as though I’d given her exactly what she needed.

I released her and stepped away when I heard her take a deep, steadying breath. I didn’t go very far, standing close and dipping my head to gauge her expression. “Better?”

She nodded shyly. “I’m sorry, I⁠—”

“Stop apologising. As you’ve rightly pointed out, it wasn’t exactly protocol for me to come here. I only have myself to blame for getting caught up in your business.”

“That’s true,” she said with a wry smile.

“Drink your tea before it goes cold.”

She nodded again, still distracted and unsettled, and sank onto the sofa. I opted for an armchair opposite her, and we sat in silence for a minute or two, blowing on our tea and letting the dust settle. I wasn’t going to push for an explanation, but neither was I going to leave until I knew what help she needed with her father. So I waited.

“We were happy, in those days,” she said quietly after a few minutes. “He wasn’t always like this. Things didn’t start going wrong until I was nearly fifteen.”

She glanced up, and I nodded my understanding but didn’t speak. There wasn’t much I could say.

“He was never very good with money, though, so I suppose the problems started years before. There were never any signs, because he and Mum spent money as though they had it. Even when they didn’t.”

She drank more tea. I stayed silent, not liking where this was going.

“He got into debt, and when he ran out of credit with the bank, he started borrowing from some really shady people. They used to come to the house, making threats, smashing things, trying to frighten us. He got beaten up a few times. We found out later he’d developed a gambling addiction.

“He was declared bankrupt in the end. The bailiffs were fairly regular visitors, but the last time they came was on Mum’s fortieth birthday, right in the middle of her celebration dinner. They took everything. Even the plate her birthday cake was on. She kicked Dad out after that. He never came back.”

“Elizabeth, I’m—” I stopped myself from saying I was sorry, because I hated it when people said that to me about my parents. But I was—so bloody sorry to hear what she’d endured. It shouldn’t have bothered me so much—we’d known each other barely three weeks—but the thought of her having to watch her family fall apart around her like that made my chest tight. “I wish you hadn’t had to go through that.”

She gave me the faintest, saddest smile and carried on, looking down into her mug, her voice dull.

“Eventually, the house was repossessed. We were homeless for a few weeks, maybe a few months—I can’t remember now. It was all such a blur. We narrowly avoided getting taken into care, then my mum’s brother and sister found out what was happening, because Jane phoned them. Turned out Mum had been keeping it all secret because she was ashamed. So then we were split up between their houses until the council found us somewhere to live all together.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Dad spiralled after that. Mum divorced him, and he lost his job and never found anywhere else to live. He stopped gambling when he didn’t have anything left to lose and turned to drink instead.”

“Does he often turn up like this?”

“He’s never come here before. This is my sister’s flat, and she and my other sisters refuse to have any contact with him.”

“But he does come to you?” That couldn’t be safe.

“Sometimes. I shouldn’t have told him I was staying here, but I gave up the lease on my last place when I got this job, and I didn’t want him turning up there and getting into trouble with the new tenants. I managed to get him a flat at a supported accommodation unit in North London, but he wanders off. I don’t know whether he forgets where he’s supposed to be or just can’t bear the loneliness. I visit him when I can, but it’s not always helpful for him to see me. Quite often it makes him worse. I can’t even get him into rehab, because NHS places are so limited, they only accept people who want to get better. And that’s… not Dad.”

Holy crap, this situation was depressing. I couldn’t fathom how Elizabeth remained so upbeat and passionate with all this going on in her life. Not that there was any hint of that drive right now; she looked miserable. All I wanted to do was hold her, to try and soak some of it up, but having her in my arms once had been pushing my luck; I didn’t dare a second embrace. I had no choice but to stay where I was on the other side of the room, a million miles away.

“Is this what you were doing last week, when you took the day off?”

She nodded and opened her mouth to say something, but she was cut off by a loud crash from the bedroom. She was up and running instantly. I caught up in a few steps, coming through the door as she crouched down at the side of the bed. Tom was fine, but he’d thrashed around in his sleep and knocked something off the bedside table that had shattered on the polished floorboards.

Elizabeth groaned. “You’re on fire today, aren’t you, Dad?”

I knelt next to her, trying to work out what had smashed as I helped pick up shards of broken glass. She retrieved a small Winnie the Pooh figurine from amongst the mess and looked at it with a lopsided, long-suffering grimace.

“This was the one thing I managed to save from Longbourn when we left. I kept it safe in my backpack the whole time we were on the streets, when we were sleeping on people’s sofas, in our cramped council house, in my university digs…” She laughed gently. “Mary always said it was the most impractical thing I could have kept.”

“What was it?”

“A snow globe.” She laughed again, more convincingly, and added, “Mary was not wrong.”

I admired the way she found amusement in the memory instead of focusing on the loss. It was a worthy philosophy. “I’m impressed. I was given a lava lamp for my eighth birthday, and one of my school friends smashed it in a pillow fight the same day. I’m still furious about it.”