Page 37 of Days You Were Mine

‘I think you’ll find it is for as long as this is your home.’

The moment erupts.

‘I don’t want it,’ I say. ‘I don’t want this home.’

‘If I were you, daughter of mine, I would take that back right now.’

We stare at each other, my father and I, with our matching masks of rage. Why, on the one day when it mattered to me, could he not have behaved? Hate does not have enough bite for how he makes me feel.

‘No. I won’t take it back. Because I meant it.’

‘Then get out. Go on, get out right now.’

My father’s face, always flushed, has turned an alarming shade. Purple madder would be the closest; I used it in Gordon King’s class last week.

‘Fine,’ I say, and now Jake is standing up too. ‘I just need my passport.’

I’ve already spied it on the dresser. I’m wondering if I should make a dash for it, just in case. But my father saves me the trouble. He shoves back his chair, a screech of metal across parquet, picks up the passport and hurls it at my face. The corner catches me just beneath my eye, and the shock of it, more than the pain, and the absolute humiliation, makes me cry, an unguarded, instantaneous reaction.

‘For God’s sake.’ Jake stoops to pick up the passport, then wraps his arm around my shoulders. ‘Let’s just go.’

My father says, ‘You’re going to have to choose between your family and this inappropriate love affair of yours, which, mark my words, you will come to regret.’

I look right into his eyes while the anger coruscates inside me like fuel. I know the answer, of course I do, but I’ll make him wait for it. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six … Mentally I’m counting down until I say the words that will make my family life implode.

‘In that case, I choose Jake.’

Now

Luke

The absence of a biological mother and father feels as intense as death to the adopted child. He is submerged in unexplained loss. And unless the facts of his birth are discussed openly, untold grief will be at the root of his character.

Who Am I? The Adoptee’s Hidden Traumaby Joel Harris

I wouldn’t admit this to anyone, but I feel a little bit pissed off when Hannah goes off for her second tête-à-tête with Rick. Like she’s getting to know him and I am not.

TheSunday Timesis running her interview as the Culture section lead and flagging it on the front page of the newspaper. In conference, the editor described it as ‘the scoop of the year’.

Rick has been customarily indiscreet, spilling confidences about Grace Jones, Mick Jagger and Lucian Freud, nothing off the record.

‘It’s all true,’ he told her. ‘So write what you like.’

For a man who hates intrusion, he has been extraordinarily generous.

I am immensely proud of Hannah and slightly put out. And my jealousy – there, I admit it – is compounded by the easy,relaxed way Alice and Hannah communicate at night. Alice loves to hear Hannah’s stories about the other journalists she works with, the shows she is reviewing, the artists she has met. When Hannah gets back from work, Alice will often stay for a cup of tea, while with me she invariably rushes off.

I have no right to feel like this, I know that. This week, when Hannah has had to work extra days to finish her Richard Fields profile, Alice stepped in to cover without any complaint and refused to take any more money for it.

‘I love looking after Samuel,’ she said. ‘You never need to feel bad about asking me.’

She is lovely, always, but slightly withdrawn.

‘You can’t bridge a gap of twenty-seven years overnight,’ Hannah said yesterday when I tried to tell her how I was feeling. ‘I know it’s hard, but you have to give it time.’

Today, however, there’s no time for reflection. Industry gossip tells me that Universal have made a colossal offer for Reborn; figures are not known, but it’s expected to be a million. There’s no way my label, Spirit, can match it, but I do have a brilliant idea up my sleeve and the trump card of allowing the band creative control when it comes to mixing their album. With Universal, they might as well be signed to Simon Cowell and have done with it. Cash-rich and the say-so of a monkey. That’s no choice at all.

As if there could be any doubt, my boss, Michael, calls me into his office at four o’clock when the rest of the company have decamped to the pub for the traditional Friday piss-up. He offers me a drink from the fridge behind his desk – neatrows of Red Stripe, Chablis and Bollinger lined up – which I refuse. I try to stay sober around Michael.

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