‘Yes. But… you really aren’t fit to drive.’
‘I’m not going far. I’ll be fine.’ What else was I going to do?
‘Ziva said you needed to be kept an eye on for at least the rest of the day.’ He took a small plastic bowl from the pile on the draining board, peering at it before giving it a wipe with a tea-towel.
‘There’ll be people there to keep an eye on me.’
‘Where?’
‘What?’
‘Where is this place, and who are the people there who can take care of you?’
‘With all due respect,’ and I owed him plenty of that, all things considered, ‘that’s not really your business.’
‘I think you’d best stay the night here,’ he sighed, lifting a banana from a bowl on the table and starting to mash it up, Hope banging out her anticipation on the tray of the highchair.
‘I can’t stay here!’ I mustered as much indignation as I could, given my current shambolic state. ‘I don’t want to stay here.’
‘I don’t massively want you to stay here, either. But you’re Charlie’s best friend. She invited you. I can’t let you head off in that excuse for a car when we both know that you haven’t a clue where you’re going.’
‘Er, have you considered that I might think driving a short distance in my recently garage-inspected car to a nearby Travelodge on the way to my parents’ house is far safer than spending the night in the middle of nowhere with a strange man whose name I don’t even know?’
‘Daniel Perry.’
‘Daniel?’ I repeated, as another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. ‘You’re Charlie’s brother.’
‘Well, yes. Who did you think I was?’
‘Hope’s father.’
‘I am Hope’s father.’ He took a seat next to her, offering her one plastic spoon to wave about while he scooped banana onto the other one.
‘What?’ My brain was too tired to process this.
‘I adopted her.’
‘So… does she have a biological father?’
‘Well, she’s not a clone.’ He bristled, clearly not comfortable with the conversation taking this direction. ‘Charlie never said who it was. I don’t think she ever told him.’
He didn’t add:if she even knew who it was.
‘And you adopted Hope?’
He shrugged, using the spoon to wipe up a blob of food on the baby’s cheek like a pro. ‘She’d been living here since she was born. I was hardly going to pack her off to social services.’
‘What about your mum?’ Charlie’s mum, Billie, who I’d met the few times she’d picked Charlie up from university, and with whom I’d exchanged anxious (me) and resigned (her) conversations a few times since.
‘She lives in Ferrington, now. She sold off most of the land and then married and moved out a couple of years after Dad died. She couldn’t fit a baby into her cottage.’ He paused, ran a finger absentmindedly down his scar. ‘She hasn’t been back to the farm since Charlie’s funeral.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yeah.’
I wondered how Daniel had managed it. Juggling work, grieving for his sister, dealing with the aftermath of such tragedy as well as a baby. No wonder the house was a shambles.
‘Charlie never mentioned that Billie remarried.’
