The Other Side of the Story Read Free

of—'
    'SSSSHHHH!' he hissed down the phone. 'Do you want the whole world to know about it? I'm sorry I ever told you now.'
    Fright deprived me of speech. He's never cross with me.
    'I will call you when I can talk.' He sounded very firm. A little like… funnily enough, a little like a father.
    'Well?' Mam asked avidly when I hung up.
    'He's going to call back.'
    When?'
    'As soon as he can.'
    Chewing my knuckles, I was uncertain of what to do next. He didn't sound mad, but he wasn't acting normal.
    I simply couldn't think what I should do. I'd never been in a situation like this before and there was no precedent or set of instructions. All we could do was wait, for news that I instinctively knew wouldn't be good. And Mam kept saying, 'What do you think? Gemma, what do you think?' Like I was the adult and had the answers.
    The only saving grace is that I didn't get all cheerful and say, 'How about a nice cup of tea?' Or even worse, 'Let's get a brew on.' I don't think tea ever fixes anything and I vowed that, no matter what, this crisis would not turn me into a tea-drinker.
    I considered driving over and confronting him at work, but if he was in the middle of a tiramisu-flavoured crisis, perhaps I wouldn't even get to see him.
    'But where would he stay?' Mam blurted plaintively. 'None of our friends would let him move in with them.'
    She wasn't wrong. The way it worked with their circle of friends was that the men held the purse strings and the car keys but the women were the power-brokers in the home. They had the final say over who came and went, so that even if one of the men had promised Dad he could kip down in their spare room, his wife wouldn't let him over the threshold, out of loyalty to Mam. But if not one of his friends' houses, then where?
    I couldn't imagine him in a mildewed bedsit with a gas ring and a rusty kettle that didn't click off automatically when it boiled.
    But if he had taken some mad notion he'd last no length away from Mam and his home comforts. He'd spend three days playing with his golf ball machine and come home when he needed clean socks.
    'When's he going to ring back?' Mam asked again.
    'I don't know. Let's watch telly.'
    While Mam pretended to watch Sunset Beach , I wrote the first email to Susan. Susan — known as 'my lovely Susan' to distinguish her from any other Susans who mightn't be quite as lovely as she was — had been one-third of the triumvirate, with me and Lily the other two, and after the great debacle she'd taken my side.
    Only eight short days ago, on January the first, she'd moved to Seattle on a two-year contract as PR for some huge bank. While she was there she'd hoped to bag herself a Microserf but it had taken no time to discover that they all work twenty-seven hours a day, so they don't have much time left over for a social life and romancing Susan. Drinking multiple-choice coffees can only fill the gap so far, so she was lonely and looking for news.
    I kept the details brief, then pressed 'send' on my Communicator Plus, a huge brick of a thing with so many functions it could nearly read your thoughts. Work had given it to me, in the guise of a present. Yeah, right! In reality it just made me more of a slave than I already was — they could contact me in any way they wanted, whenever they wanted. And the weight of it tore the silky lining of my second-best handbag.
    When Sunset Beach ended and Dad still hadn't rung back, I said, 'This isn't right. I'm going to ring him again.'

2

    TO: [email protected]
    FROM: Gemma [email protected]
    SUBJECT: runaway dad, still at large
    OK, more news. You're going to need a Valium when you hear, so don't read any further until you've got it. Go on, go.
    Back? Ready? Right. My father, Noel Hogan, has a girlfriend. It gets worse. She's thirty-six. Only four years older than me .
    Where did he meet her? Where do you think? Work, of course. She's his - God, the tedious predictability of it - his PA. Colette's her name and she has