Secret Daddy(5)

All I took inside with me were some clothes and some blankets, enough to create a makeshift bed in the living room in the dark. I’d try and work out what was going on with the electricity in the morning. I changed out of my wet things and draped them over an icy cold radiator. Then I climbed into my little nest of blankets and laid there listening to the noises of the house as the wind outside continued to howl.

I wondered if I’d made the right decision. I was in a house with no furniture, no curtains, possibly no electricity. Should I have moved? Had I made a huge mistake, coming somewhere where I didn’t know anyone, where there might not be any work for me? What would I do if I couldn’t get a job? When I’d filled in the mortgage application, I’d been working of course, but that job was back there, back in the life I’d left behind.

I found myself thinking about the man who’d helped me. What if everyone here was like him? All of them hating strangers, hating conversation.

I realised with a gut-wrenching feeling that I’d been very lucky that he wasn’t a serial killer or something like that. I was by a broken down car with no signal on my phone and a tall, gruff, furious stranger rummaging in his boot before bringing out some spanner thing. What if he’d hit me over the head with it?

I went to sleep wondering if he lived in the town, thinking that even if he did, I’d probably struggle to recognise him. All I’d seen was his chin. It wasn’t much to go on.

I woke up the next morning a little after eight. The storm had passed overnight and through the windows I could see the sun was already up, the world looking a lot brighter in the daylight. It made me more optimistic about things. I sat up and yawned, climbing out of the blankets with a certainty that this was the right decision. The house was fine, it wasn’t collapsing, there would be plenty of space, and I’d find a job sooner or later.

I brought the boxes in from the car, piling them up in the living room. Then I went to try and find out what was wrong with the electricity. It turned out that the previous owner had switched it off. I felt quite proud of myself for finding the box that controlled it. A flick of a switch and it was back on. Next to the meter box was a note addressed to me.



Dear Miss Hayes,



I hope you enjoy this house as much as I did and that it becomes a lovely family home for you in the future. I recall you mentioned liking acting and the theatre and that you hoped to join my theatre group. I must suggest you do not join them, they have proved themselves a duplicitous bunch and I believe your interest would be better utilised in another direction with less bitter people.

Speaking of utilising, the details of the utilities are in the red file I left in the top drawer by the kitchen sink. I hope you don’t mind that I took the garden gnomes with me, I just couldn’t bear to leave them behind. Bin day is Tuesday round here. Watch the shed door, it has a tendency to stick.



All the best,



Nancy Miller, B.A (Hons)



As I finished reading the note, I heard the flap of the letterbox. Turning to head down the hall, I found a pile of post waiting for me on the doormat. It was mostly junk mail but in amongst the pizza shop menus and double glazing offers was a town newsletter. I flicked through it, my eyes drawn to the inside back page which covered the local community groups.

Halfway down the page was a paragraph covering the Scarton Amateur Dramatic Society with S.A.D.S printed next to it in brackets. It mentioned that they met up every Sunday and Wednesday at seven in the evening. The article discussed their last play, a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. This was the group Nancy thought I should avoid?

Some little rebel in me had balked at being told not to join their group by her. I felt like I was back at school again. Whenever a teacher had told me not to do something, that was pretty much guaranteed to make me want to do it. The only lesson I ever behaved in was drama, or theatre studies to give it its proper name. I fell in love with acting when I was in primary school and the interest had never left me. Everything about it excited me, from writing my own plays when I was little, doing my best to force my friends to appear in them, to the day of my examination where I had an entire audience applauding little me as I grinned back at them and took a bow at the end of my one person version of A Streetcar Named Desire, a challenge if ever there was one. I still had the vest somewhere.

I looked at the article again. If I didn’t go along, would that interest die away? I’d been a big part of the drama group at home. Not that it was home anymore, of course. I had to give it a shot. I enjoyed it too much not to. Seeing that they would be meeting that evening at seven decided things for me. I was going to go along and see just how unfriendly they were.