Daddy's Here(35)

When was I last happy? I remembered when Sarah told me she was pregnant. That was a perfect moment, one that allowed me to gloss over the warning signs that had so regularly flared during our relationship. When you’re a doorman for a dodgy bar, you should know that the women who come in aren’t going to be marriage material. She’d seemed different though. At first.

Watching her belly swell, I had become utterly entranced by the idea of becoming a father, a feeling I hadn’t expected, not after my own childhood experiences. But the baby came out without a hitch and I was suddenly the ultimate Dad, not even flinching at the birth, even as she cursed me with every name under the sun. She was beautiful too, the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

I blamed myself for what happened. I had a hell of a long time in prison to mull over everything, long enough to decide I should have spotted it sooner. I should have questioned Sarah about the bruises that kept appearing on Abbey’s pudgy little legs, the way she seemed only to scream when she knew I was going out to work and leaving the two of them alone.

“She’s just a Daddy’s girl,” Sarah had said in that reassuring voice of hers, placating me so many times that I felt sure I was wrong. I was suspicious but she was cunning, far more cunning than me. I’ll never understand why she did it, what made her mind snap and take out all her anger on our perfect, angelic, little baby girl.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t been used to lies before. Years earlier, when I’d been growing up, I’d had a full education in the lies people tell, the darkness that lurks in the human mind.

I sat on the train with my eyes tightly shut as a memory came back to me, one that I’d kept buried for so long, I was surprised it was still there. Maybe it had always been there, just waiting for me to weaken long enough to come back and try and take over my psyche.

I was at school getting picked up for the state of my clothes. Smelly skin, smelly clothes. Not enough to warrant any of the teachers giving a toss but enough to warrant being the butt of the other kids my age. I was in the middle of a fight as I had been so many times before. I learned a lot about fighting in that school, not much else. I didn’t care if I got sent home. If I did, I’d get to try and protect my mother from my father’s drunken attacks.

I was sent home that day, the memory becoming clearer the longer my thoughts fixed on it. I was dragged away from four other boys and told that I’d started it, that I was out of control. I was a disgrace, a violent thug who would never amount to anything.

I remembered walking home with my ear still ringing from the punch that had landed so hard on it, the one that meant I had to teach a lesson to the shit who’d done it to me.

I walked into the house expecting to hear them shouting at each other but instead there was silence. My mother wasn’t there. My father was though, sat in his stained armchair, a half full glass in his hand. “What have you done now?” he asked, his voice slurred.

“Where’s mum?”

“She’s gone,” he said, leaning back and draining the glass. “That’s what women do, Jakey. It’s your fault, you know? Everything was fine until you came along.”

He continued to rant but I’d stopped listening. Mum had gone? It didn’t seem possible. I’d tried to persuade her to leave so many times, making her promise she’d take me with her when she went, telling her I’d protect her. And then she left without me.

He sat getting drunker while I went into my bedroom, the smell of damp and mould overpowering my nostrils. Even as an adult, I only had to smell damp to be back there, miserable and cold all over again. I found the note she’d left for me, the words seared into my soul. I could remember it perfectly. ‘I’m sorry for not taking you with me,’ she’d written. ‘But I don’t want you to see what I’m going to do. I love you, Jakey. I’m sorry.’

I jolted upright, opening my eyes to find Isabel smiling across at me. “You were asleep,” she said. “You were dreaming.”

I looked back at her with an overwhelming sadness passing through me. I had to let her go. Abbey had been hurt because of me, Sarah standing up in court and saying everything went wrong when the baby came along. My mother had been hurt because of me. I couldn’t let the same thing happen to Isabel, it would be too cruel.

I’d drop her off at Ben’s house then I’d work out what to do next. She was better off away from me, everyone was better off away from me. That’s why you don’t get involved, I told myself as she turned to look out of the window again. When you get involved, people get hurt.