is what do we do about telling Victor the truth? It has to be today. There are too many people who know now. It’s just a matter of time before someone blurts it out.’
‘Are you interested in how your daughter feels about it all?’
Patrick’s shoulders sagged. ‘I am interested. I was just coming to that. This isn’t a favouritism thing, Jo. It’s a practicalities thing. You’ve already put Phoebe in the picture. I don’t think it’s so unreasonable to expect the same for Victor, given that it directly concerns him.’ His voice cracked. ‘He’s only eighteen, for God’s sake.’
I struggled to formulate a sensible strategy against the backdrop of hammering in my head. ‘I think the best thing is for you to take Victor out on your own.’
‘I’d rather you were there. I don’t want this to be an “I’m your dad” issue, I’d like us to present it as a family thing.’
I breathed out. ‘But it’s not, is it, really?’
Patrick folded his arms. ‘I can’t see how it can work if it isn’t. I hope you can find a way to accept it, that eventually you can see that no one, not me, not Ginny, set out to hurt you. At the time, it just didn’t seem important.’
I put my head in my hands. ‘Let me have a shower. Perhaps you can take Georgia home when they get up. I can’t face Faye today.’
Patrick turned to go downstairs. ‘By the way, I popped into see Ginny’s dad just before dinner last night. He’s moving into a home in a couple of weeks. He gave me a few knick-knacks for Victor. I promised we’d take him down to visit soon.’ He looked at me. ‘Well, I’ll drive him if you don’t want to come.’ He reached into the bag at his feet. ‘Her dad also sent this. He wanted you to have it. He wrote a note for you as well.’
I held my hand out. Ginny’s favourite poetry book. Maya Angelou. I pressed the book to my face. In another life, Ginny could have been an actress. She’d been so good at reading out loud, preferring poetry to novels. I could see her now, balancing on a stool in our kitchen, her long legs tucked under her, flicking through a poetry book and reading lines out to us. ‘Poets get emotion. They’re intense about it. And so clever. Summing up life in so few words. I love the directness of poetry.’ I wish I’d listened properly, instead of both envying her sophistication and dismissing her eccentricity.
‘I didn’t know you were planning to visit Tayo?’
Patrick met my eye with a glimmer of defiance. ‘I wanted to talk to someone who loved Victor. And I know he hasn’t got long left.’
‘So you wanted to promise him that Victor would be okay?’ The words grazed against my throat. ‘Had Ginny told him?’ I knew admitting that truth would have cost her. Her parents were so disappointed that she hadn’t married well and her best friend’s husband would be an extra notch up the displeasure scale.
‘I didn’t ask him directly but he didn’t look very surprised when I brought it up. Sort of nodded in a “that all makes sense” kind of way.’
‘Was he delighted to have you as a son-in-law by proxy?’ Despite myself, I didn’t want that proud old man to suffer any more pain than he had already. No father should outlive his daughter.
‘He was very happy that Victor has a stable home. He spent most of his time impressing on me the importance of encouraging Victor to become a doctor or a lawyer. His face lit up when I told him how well he was doing in school.’
‘If you leave out the fact that everyone thinks he’s running a drugs ring.’
Patrick screwed up his face. ‘I’m just going to rise above that. There are arseholes everywhere.’ I tried not to notice that ‘We’ had become ‘I’. ‘Anyway, I’ll leave you to shower. Have a think about how you want to approach speaking to Victor.’
Patrick’s tone had a definite ‘in or out’ ultimatum about it. It underlined the shift in a matter of months from an understanding that if Victor put too much of a strain on our family life, we’d find a different solution for him, to the sense that I, not he, would be packing my bags. The unspoken words, ‘Don’t make me choose’ hung in the air long after Patrick had left.
I sat in bed, hoping to alight