Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [45]
Maybe, if things had been different, you would never have needed to know. You weren’t close to Donald, I know. I gave you a happy childhood, I think. No, I know. Whatever else I have to feel bad about, that I don’t. I was the best mum I knew how to be, and when Mark came along, whatever problems Jennifer and Lisa might have had with him, he was great for you. I remember watching the two of you together and thinking that I had gotten so bloody lucky. And even when Hannah came along, he still loved you the same, I know he has. We made a family, and we were happy. He was the miracle of all of our lives.
But there is a thing in you, my lovely. The thing that keeps you traveling. The thing that makes you hold yourself a little apart from people. My girl with a thousand mates around the world but no best friend. The beautiful woman who slays men with her smile and her wiggle, but has never been in love. The thing that took you away from me, let you walk away, or made you walk away, knowing that you would never see me again. I feel like there is something inside you that I need to solve. And I wonder if this is a piece in your puzzle, Amanda.
I hope that knowing doesn’t make more questions than it answers. I’m sorry I’m not here to answer them. I should be, I know. I hope it helps. And most of all, I hope that it doesn’t make you hate me, because I have always loved you so, my beautiful child. Not more than I have loved your sisters, but differently. Because you were always just mine to love.
Mum
Amanda was still for a long while. The letter lay beside her on the bed. After a few minutes, Ed stroked her and asked, “Okay?”
“My dad wasn’t my dad.”
“What did you say?”
“My dad—the man I thought was my dad—the man Mum was married to when she got pregnant with me—he wasn’t my dad.”
“Christ. That’s what’s in the letter?”
“Yep.”
“And that’s the first you’ve heard of it?”
“Yep.”
“Bloody hell, Amanda.”
She smiled at him, tight-lipped.
“Yep.”
“Does anyone else know?”
Her voice was quiet and controlled. “Apparently not. She’s only telling me now so that ‘her secret doesn’t die with her’…I think that was the expression she used.”
“That’s a pretty big lie to carry around with you for twenty-odd years.”
She snorted and raised an eyebrow. “Mark doesn’t know.” She was talking more to herself than to him now.
“Mark?”
“My stepdad. I can’t believe she wouldn’t have told him.”
“So he’s not your dad, either?”
“Course not. I told you—I was, like, eight or something, when they got together.” She knew she sounded irritated, which was unfair—they’d only talked about family once, last night, and he’d hardly expected to have to fill in a timeline the following morning. But she couldn’t help the shortness in her voice.
“Sorry.”
She tried to remember that she liked this guy; she really, really liked him. That this was nothing to do with him. “No…I’m sorry…how should you know?”
He was struggling to find things to say. Ed was a little frightened. Amanda still hadn’t moved, and, apart from that first small smile, she hadn’t even looked at him. He felt the enormity of this news, but he knew he was ill-equipped to deal with it. Whatever he felt for her—and what he felt, he’d just contemplated, paying for milk and bread in the corner shop, was a bit of a revelation to him—he hardly knew her. He didn’t know what she wanted.
“So does she say…in the letter…who your dad is?”
“No. She says I don’t need to know. Apparently I’m the product of some sordid