Daddy's Little Girl

2002

Kate was a very studious girl. Unfortunately, due to health issues, she had to drop out of school at sixteen. Her father, Robert, was her idol. She loved to spend time with him. When she was having a good day, he would bring her to the airport to plane watch. She noticed, however, that there was a change in him…he had become distant and was glued to his phone.

A year passed and not many planes were spotted. Robert was always ‘too busy’ or had to ‘work late’ rendering it impossible to do the one thing that brought her so much joy. If she was honest the real reason she loved plane watching so much was because it was something for her to do with her father, something just for them.

Kate’s family had moved house prior to her becoming ill. They worked on the upstairs first, renovating one room at a time. The plan was always to wait a couple of years before finally doing the downstairs.

A month before the downstairs was due to be gutted, Kate was walking back from the bathroom, passing her parents bedroom as she went. She thought she could hear her mother crying. On the way back she was sure of it and knocked gently on the solid, white, wooden door. It opened a crack and Kate saw her mother, Mary, sitting on the edge of the bed sobbing into her hands.

‘Is everything ok?’ Kate asked tentatively…. but nothing could have prepared her for the answer. ‘Your father is having an affair!’ her mother blurted out. Her father, her idol, was sitting on the other side of the bed getting very hot under the collar. ‘Tell her Robert!’ Mary demanded, ‘TELL HER!!!’ Robert merely nodded which was enough for Kate to blow up and, for the first time in her life, she cursed in front of her parents. She really went to town on her father…she went farther than her mother could. When she was finished, she left her parents sort out their differences and made her way back to her bedroom.

Unable to sleep, Kate made her way downstairs and sat in the kitchen in the dark. She was just grateful that her little brother, Kevin, was fast asleep and was oblivious to the revelations that were taking place. Kate was startled as the room was suddenly illuminated by the lights above her, her father standing beside the switch in his pyjamas. ‘Can I come in?’ he asked, tears in his eyes. It took her a minute for her eyes to adjust to the light but, eventually, she nodded.

She followed her father with her eyes, a grimace on her face, as he made his way to the opposite side of the table where he sat and buried his face in his hands. ‘How long?’ Kate demanded. Robert shook his head and couldn’t meet her gaze. ‘How long?’ Kate repeated through gritted teeth. ‘A year,’ Robert finally admitted and began to cry. Kate felt like a bolt of lightning had passed through her body…. she was furious. She had lots of questions, all of which her father answered. There was one question, however, that he couldn’t answer, ‘are you leaving us?’ Just asking the question was like razor blades being regurgitated from her core.

Kate took her father’s lack of an answer as confirmation. She got up from the table and made her way back upstairs to her bedroom. She sat on her bed, her back against the wall and crossed her legs like a buddha, staring into the abyss. The light started to creep in around the curtains. Every time she closed her eyes, new tears crept down her porcelain cheeks.

A knock on the door woke her from her trance…it was her mother. ‘I think we need a family meeting!’ she said with a square jaw. Kate looked at the clock, it was 9:30. She wiped her eyes and had to untangle her legs with her hands as they were asleep. She sat for a minute, waiting for the feeling to return to her extremities. Once confident that they would hold her, she got up and pulled her soft, grey, fleece dressing gown around her, before making her way downstairs.

Three steps from the bottom she let out a gasp and clapped her hands to her mouth…there was a bag in the hall. Frozen to the spot, she heard ringing in her ears and began to see white spots. She quickly planted her backside on the step she was standing on and started to wail. She saw her mother come running, but was unable to form a sentence. Her father came into the hall and took his coat off the banisters beside Kates head, her brother, Kevin, holding onto his leg.

Kate watched as her mother looked into her fathers eyes pleading with him not to go. ‘We can work it out!’ she cried. Her father put on his coat and shrugged Kevin off as if he were a dog before picking up his bag and leaving. Her mother gasped and fell to her knees. Her father didn’t look back.

Twenty years on (2022) ……

Since Robert left, he has had very little time for Kevin and Kate. Before covid hit, Kate and her father would go plane watching once a month…but it wasn’t the same. She has only seen her father four times in the last two years.

She feels defective as Robert has his second family now. He has a girlfriend of ten years, who is a widow with a twenty-two-year-old son who is on the autism spectrum. The knowledge that this boy looks up to Kates daddy infuriates her. She feels like she has been replaced, and rightly so. The knowledge that he gets to see her father every day is like a dagger that has been plunged into her gut and twisted.

Kate misses her father terribly. What hurts the most is that he doesn’t want to meet up with her…she is forever trying to organise to go out for breakfast, or lunch…anything to spend time with him. The green-eyed monster perked up when she was told that her replacement got her father a wallet for Father’s Day. All she got him were books, but she has no way of getting them to him as he won’t even tell her where he lives. Kate is lucky if she gets a couple of phone calls a month from him.

Kevin refuses to speak to Robert, and hasn’t done with the exception of their uncles funeral where Robert showed up out of the blue and accused him of being on steroids. Kevin was a very active man and lost his job as a dance teacher when covid hit. Obviously when a very fit man who teaches eight classes a day suddenly stops, they naturally put on a few pounds.

Kate refuses to give up on Robert and is hopeful that he will eventually pull his socks up and act like a father to his actual children…. eventually.

picture from pixabay