up on his shoulders and danced with her along the pier. She’d been afraid of the clown. He had a scary white face and false red smile.
No-one understood why Patty took Jilly with her when she left. Perhaps it was to spite Andy. Maybe, at the last minute, some maternal feeling prevailed. Nevertheless, she had Jilly with her when she disappeared with a New Zealand tourist called Brad.
Family relationships are complex, and it was almost with a sense of reprieve that her parents realised that Patty was now beyond their assistance. They felt a burden lift as they came to understand that they would no longer have to justify her actions or bear witness to the daily evidence of her selfishness. But they could not so easily reconcile themselves to the loss of Jilly. She had been a happy and affectionate little soul and they missed her dreadfully, mourning her as though she were dead.
Andy Baker had accepted some time ago that he no longer loved Patty. He didn’t even like her much, and would have celebrated her desertion if it weren’t for the fact that she took their daughter—his daughter—with her. He was nearly mad with grief. Coming home from work with the forlorn hope that she might have returned, he would pause at the front door and listen in vain for the sound of her little voice calling to him: Is that you, Daddy? Here I are, Daddy. And his arms ached to swing her up, and his face longed to feel her soft little cheek against his. He spent every spare penny trying to locate her.
He finally tracked them down to Sydney, where Patty and Jilly were living with a new man, Serg. Court orders were issued giving him access to his daughter, but Patty was always on the move and changed her name many times. The trail had gone cold by the time Patty—now calling herself Monique Tyler— and her daughter finally settled in Perth with Brian who, unlike Patty’s other lovers, tried to be a father to Jilly.
Jilly had pined for her own father, of course, and Patty judged it wiser to tell her that he’d died. In a car accident, she had explained. You mustn’t be sad, though. You have Mummy and Brad (then Craig, Harry, and so on).
Meanwhile, Andy had begun to drink. He would come home from work, pause at the door and then head for the fridge, gulping down a can of beer before heating up a pork pie or sending out for a pizza. Some nights, if he remembered, he’d bring home cod and chips. Whatever he ate, it was always washed down with a couple of cans of beer, and he’d drink another three or four before falling into his bed, never quite drunk enough. The house he’d been lovingly renovating fell into disrepair. His days were grey and his nights black. On –Jilly’s birthday each year, he’d get very drunk and cry. He always imagined her as she was when he had last seen her. For him, she was forever five years old.
Far away, in Perth, Jilly was beginning to dare to feel safe when, after nearly two years of relative security, she and her mother were alone again. It was usually Patty who ended relationships, but this time it was Brian who left.
‘I’m sorry, Jilly,’ he said. ‘If I were your dad, I’d take you with me.’
‘Yeah,’ said fourteen-year-old Jilly. ‘Whatever.’ But she hugged him briefly and took the money he gave her.
‘Don’t waste it, Jilly. It’s for an emergency,’ he said. ‘For God’s sake don’t let Patty know you have it.’
Jilly hid the money, of course. She had learned not to trust her mother.
After Brian left, life returned to normal: more parties, more men, and school shoes with holes. One day, shortly after her fifteenth birthday, Jilly came home from school to find a note on the kitchen table.
Dear Jilly
Im off to France with Dominik. Your old enough to look after yourself now and I need a life of my own Im only 33. The rents overdue but Ill send you some money when I’m setled. I left $10 to buy a pizza for your tea. I took your black jumper and red shirt. I’ll need them til Dominik can by me some new clothe’s.
Love
Patty
Since Jilly turned twelve she was no longer allowed to call Patty ‘Mum’. They looked more like sisters, Patty thought. And she was right.
Book of Lost Threads Children of such parents learn