Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [89]
Mum’s room was full of boxes for a long time. She said there was no way she was going to leave anything personal at the house for another woman to go through and judge her on. She had old photograph albums, and back issues of magazines, and maternity clothes, and stuffed toys, and cookbooks. She’d stripped herself from the house completely and left nothing of her spirit behind.
Donald and Marissa had moved a long way away after that. He’d told them one Sunday, between a matinee of a film they both found too childish, and a packet of crisps and a Coke in the local pub garden. Marissa had family in Kent, he said, and wanted to be closer to them. Amanda was just a few weeks old then, and he had only seen her once, just after she was born. Jennifer had asked him why he didn’t want to be near to his family, but she only did it to make him feel bad, really. Lisa couldn’t remember what his reply had been.
After he’d gone a change-of-train-ride away, the regular visits had dwindled. This was the early 1980s, and there had been no provision for visitation in their parents’ divorce. It was up to all of them. Lisa remembered spending one or two strange and uncomfortable weekends in Sevenoaks, with Dad and Marissa. She tried too hard. She made elaborate breakfasts and tried to plan excursions. She took them shopping and offered to buy them things in Chelsea Girl and Dorothy Perkins. Lisa suspected that what she wanted was for the two of them to go home and rave about her to Mum, and there was no way she was going to do that. Their house in Sevenoaks was nothing like the home he’d shared with their mother. They had a living room that they never lived in. They just sat in it, like in a Jane Austen parlor, when they had guests. There was no television in it, so why would you go in there any other time? Marissa kept the tissue boxes under embroidered cotton covers, and there were proper fabric napkins on the table at mealtimes, and there was always dessert (and not just Wall’s ice cream). Mum was never into all that then.
FORTUNATELY, AND INEVITABLY, MARISSA LOST INTEREST IN them when her own daughter was born a couple of years later. She’d only ever been practicing. With hindsight, Lisa suspected that persuading her father to have another baby might have been quite a task, and presumably, demonstrating her maternal qualities on them was part of her charm offensive against him. Olivia never felt like their sister, of course. She was…well, she must be about twenty-one now. Lisa hadn’t seen her since their dad died. Olivia had been sixteen then. She was the spitting image of her mother. Lisa didn’t know, and had rarely wondered, whether her dad was a better, more interested father to Olivia than he had been to them, but she hoped so.
They never had a summer holiday with their dad, after they left. Or spent a Christmas. He never came to visit them at the university, and they didn’t invite him to attend their graduations, although his checks had arrived regularly throughout their time there. It sounded cruel now, but it hadn’t felt it. It wasn’t as if he was chomping at the bit to come. It wasn’t that he didn’t love them. Lisa believed that on some level he did—at least Jennifer and her. Not Amanda, perhaps—they’d never known each other at all. He just didn’t love them very much. And Mum loved them enough for two.
Jennifer had been on the horns of a dilemma, engaged to Stephen and planning a wedding eight years ago. Should Dad walk her down the aisle? Should he even be there?