The Memory Book by Rowan Coleman

Daddy,’ Esther says helpfully, as Mum puts a dish of orange on the table. ‘I don’t like carrots.’
    ‘Oh.’ Greg is taken aback. ‘What, now?’ Greg never asked me about Caitlin’s father, and it was one of the things I doremember I loved about him. Caitlin was just my daughter, the person who came with me, no negotiation, and he accepted that right away. It took him a long time to make friends with Caitlin: years of inch-by-inch dedication that slowly allowed her to relent and accept him in her life, long after she’d accepted Esther, who was instantly just one of us, an Armstrong girl, from the moment she was born. ‘Will she be OK with that?’
    ‘She doesn’t know,’ Caitlin says, arriving in the living room. ‘She doesn’t like the sound of it, though, whatever it is.’
    ‘It’s carrots and them other vegibles,’ Esther commiserates.
    ‘You look refreshed,’ I say, and smile. Her black eyes, along with the cascades of dark hair and her strong chin, stopped being reminders of her father when she was only a few months old: she owned them from the very beginning. Now, though, with Paul’s photo tucked in the back of the memory book, I see him in Caitlin’s eyes, which are watching me, warily.
    ‘But you’ve got my eyebrows,’ I say out loud.
    ‘If only that were a good thing,’ Caitlin jokes.
    ‘Darling, I want to talk to you a bit more about your father …’
    ‘I know.’ She seems calm, thoughtful. Whatever it was that made her lock herself in her room for the afternoon seems to have subsided a little. ‘I know you do, Mum, and I know why you want to do it. I get it. But you don’t need to, you see? You don’t need to tell me, because it won’t make any difference, except to maybe make things even more complicated than they already are, and none of us needsthat, trust me …’ She hesitates, watching me closely, and her face, which I used to be able to read like an open book, is a mystery. ‘I thought about it, because it’s what you want. I thought about seeing him, but I don’t want to. Why would I give a stranger a chance to reject me again? Because I’m pretty sure he doesn’t care at all that he’s had a child in the world all this time. If he were bothered, if he cared, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we? I’d have his number on speed dial.’
    Mum puts the gravy jug down on the table with a thud.
    ‘Guess what my bear’s name is?’ Esther asks Caitlin, sensing the tension spilling over like the gravy.
    ‘Tarquin,’ Caitlin says. Esther finds that hilarious. ‘Marmaduke? Othello?’
    Esther giggles.
    ‘The thing is …’ I start again. ‘What you need to remember is …’
    ‘Just tell her,’ Mum says, thumping the meat down on the table as though she is intent on murdering it twice.
    ‘Gran, Mum’s told me she’d tell me about him when I wanted to know,’ Caitlin says sharply, protective of me. ‘Please, can we just drop it? I’ve got stuff I need to talk about too, before I … before tomorrow.’
    Mum looks at me expectantly, and I wait to know what to say, but nothing comes.
    ‘What?’ Caitlin says. ‘Come on, Gran, say what you’re thinking. I’m sure we’d all like to know.’
    ‘It’s not for me to say,’ she says.
    ‘What’s not for you to say?’ Caitlin asks her, exasperated, rolling her eyes at me.
    ‘Claire?’ Greg prompts me with a frown – the frown I can’t read any more.
    I close my eyes and force out the words. ‘Your dad. Paul,’ I say. ‘He didn’t walk out on me, or abandon you. I mean, if I’d known that’s what you were thinking all these years, I’d have told you sooner. I said I’d tell you when you were ready, but you never asked again …’
    ‘What do you mean?’ Caitlin rises from her chair. ‘What are you saying – that you sent him away?’
    I shake my head. ‘No … I never told him I was pregnant,’ I tell her. ‘He doesn’t know you exist. He never has.’
    Caitlin