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СКАЧАТЬ girl had black hair like mine and blue eyes like mine, and her face shape was mine. I stared at it. ‘Why are you telling me now? If she’s seven, why tell me now?’ I was looking at a picture of a child that was meant to be mine.

      ‘Because you should know. You should have known then, but my parents are old-fashioned, they didn’t want anyone told. I pretended it wasn’t happening, because I didn’t know what to do. They found out about Daisy when I had her a month early on the floor in my room. Mum found us there and they rushed us both to hospital. I was lucky I didn’t kill Daisy.

      ‘Afterwards Mum and Dad told everyone the child was a maid’s and they were going to adopt her and look after her. It took three years for me to stand up to them and tell them I was going to let people know Daisy was mine.’

      ‘I don’t know what to say.’ I stared at the image on her phone. My child. I had a child. Those words kept spinning through my brain. ‘What do I say?’

      ‘I met David after that, and he’s a great dad. He didn’t want me to tell you. That’s why he isn’t here. But when I got the letter from the school, it was like it was telling me I had to come here and let you know. You should know her, and she should know you.’

      I stared at the picture. My daughter. I’d never choose to have a child. Never. My life was too fucked up. But I had a child. I’d had a child for all the years I’d been acting like a selfish bastard with Sharon. This little human being was made up of part of me. ‘You should have told me.’ I was a father. Me.

      ‘I should have. I know. I’m sorry. But at the point I felt capable of speaking to you about it, she was already four and I didn’t know how to begin.’

      When she’d been five I’d married Sharon. Would I have made the same decision to lead a hedonistic life if I’d known about this child? Shit. I’d come here feeling introspective and nostalgic—questioning my life. This spun everything on its head. It was like someone had put my life in a box, picked it up and shaken it.

      A child. I looked at Victoria, a frown probably making a line down the middle of my forehead. ‘Am I allowed to see her, then?’

      ‘Yes. David’s agreed.’

      ‘I doubt I need David’s agreement.’

      ‘Don’t be like that, please. If we’re doing this, if you want to see her and get to know her, then you have to do it sensitively. She’s a child. It will be a massive thing for her. You’ll need to take it slowly.’

      ‘This is a massive thing for me. I just discovered I have a seven-year-old daughter.’ When I’m not fit to be a father.

      ‘You’ll have to see her in my company, at least to begin with. I can’t let her visit someone who’s a stranger. You’d scare her.’

      Scare her, my own child. But I had a legal right to her. I looked back at the picture. ‘Does she know about me?’

      ‘Yes, since she was four I’ve shown her your pictures from school, and said you’re her daddy.’

      I looked at Victoria again. ‘So I’m not a complete stranger to her, but she is to me.’ I shut my eyes as a wave of pain washed through my soul. ‘You should’ve answered my messages that summer and told me. I would have helped you.’

      ‘Jack you liked me but you didn’t love me. You’d have felt guilty and made choices that changed your life, we’d have been stuck—’

      ‘It changed your life. If the two of us made her, shouldn’t the two of us have had equal impact? I would have loved her. I’m capable of love…’

      Did I even know that? God, I hadn’t experienced it. I loved my parents and they were probably the only people, and look at what I’d done to them; we’d only spoken on birthdays and at Christmas since I’d been with Sharon.

      I stared at the picture. My child. The emotion in me was like flowing ripples on a pond racing outward after someone had dropped a stone in the middle. Her eyes were so like mine. There was no point in denying it. I’d made a child. Me. God! I wasn’t going to mess her up. I had to do this. I had to be that man. As Victoria had said, there was no choice. I would love this child. I would shift heaven and earth. I would turn my fucking life around to be good enough for her. I had flesh and blood in this world.

      How different would my life have been if Victoria had told me she was pregnant when I’d been seventeen?

      There was no knowing.

      Jealousy threw another fist into my stomach and clasped around my throat. I was jealous of Victoria, of her normal life, of her happiness – of the fact she’d brought up my daughter and seen her start to walk and learn to talk. ‘Tell me about her.’

      I asked her everything. When did Daisy ride her first bike? What was the first word she’d said? What did she like to do? Was she a fast runner, like I’d been? Did she swim? Was she reading? I spent an hour talking to Victoria about Daisy, with her picture held in my hand, as odd emotions twisted over in my stomach.

      The school clock rang out the hour.

      It brought back a hundred memories of being in school here. I had a daughter who went to school somewhere… I was going to start asking questions about where she lived and what school Daisy went to but Victoria gripped my arm. ‘We’d better go back. I want to get ready for the ball this evening.’

      ‘Okay.’ I stood up, suddenly numb. This level of shock was like being hit by a car that had then reversed and run over me; it wasn’t just my feet that had been taken out from underneath me. ‘When can I see her?’

      She smiled. ‘Talk to her on the phone first, Jack.’

      I didn’t want to wait, I wanted to follow Victoria home. I didn’t want to stay for the ball. Patience had never been a skill I possessed.

      She held my wrist. ‘I’ll see you at the ball tonight and we can swap numbers and organise something in the next couple of weeks.’

      Weeks. Uh-uh. No. I wanted a deadline. Days. But I bit my tongue and nodded.

      I didn’t ring Sharon when I got back to my room, I rang Mum. ‘Hi, it’s Jack.’

      ‘Hello dear. This is unusual. How are you?’ She never asked how Sharon was; they ignored her existence, sweeping the embarrassment I’d made of my life under one of their nice ornamental carpets.

      ‘I’m feeling a bit weird.’ I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my elbows on my knees and my forehead balanced on my free hand. ‘I’m at my old school. There’s a reunion thing.’

      ‘That’s nice.’ Her voice made it sound as though she was surprised I’d bothered to go. But I’d earned, and created, every ill opinion they had of me. Rebellious, self-centred bastard that I’d been. I think money was bad for you when you were a kid. It had made me take everything, including them, for granted.

      But right now, Mum was the only person I wanted to talk to.

      ‘Mum, one of the girls told me I got her pregnant when she was sixteen. She had a baby when she was seventeen. A girl. A daughter. The child’s nearly eight now, and she’s mine. I have a daughter I’ve never seen, and you’re a grandma.’

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