Jason Elliot - The Network

‘Stand by,’ he says. He’s too stupid to realise I’ve been standing by for years. But it’s not my daughter who comes on the line.

‘Hello, Anthony,’ says my ex with scarcely disguised contempt. ‘You said you would call at ten.’

‘Sorry about that. I’m a bit jet-lagged, actually.’

‘Well that’s alright,’ she says. ‘We’re used to your excuses. But in future lateness is unacceptable. You may think you can swan in from England and expect everyone else to change their plans, but from now on you’re going to have to modify your behaviour.’

‘I just want to see the girls for a few hours,’ I say.

‘Well if you’re not here by eleven you won’t find us.’

The line goes dead. As much as I try, every time, to prepare myself for this kind of treatment, it never fails to have the intended effect.

Half an hour later I’m at the front door of their house in Chevy Chase, thanking God it’s Sunday and the traffic has allowed me to reach the house in time. I ask the taxi to wait because I don’t want to get into an argument, which I will inevitably lose. There’s a silver Mercedes SUV and a convertible BMW in the driveway beside the perfect lawn.

I kneel as the girls run out and throw themselves at me, nearly knocking me over. They’ve both grown since I saw them in the summer and I can hardly believe how changed they are. The sight of them brings a lump to my throat but I daren’t let my feelings show. I’m being watched from the doorway by their mother, who glowers at me as if there’s a tramp in the driveway.

‘Jesus. You look like you’ve been in a bar brawl. That’s not an appropriate impression to give in public.’

‘Yes, it does hurt, actually. Thanks for asking.’

‘Make sure you’re back by three. We’ve given up a family afternoon for this. And no sugar. They’re not allowed candy, whatever you may think is alright in England.’

There’s no response I can give to any of this, so we pile into the taxi.

‘Alright, girls, where to? We can go to China to see pandas, buffalo racing in India, or we can go to the North Pole and hunt reindeer. Or if you’re both very good, we can go and have waffles with maple syrup and loads of whipped cream.’

There’s a chorus of approving giggles at the suggestion. We head for a diner and repeat the usual ritual of waffles and hot chocolate. I watch them eat, and the sight fills me with joy. But the thought that they’re growing up so far from their father is like a knife in me at the same time. We catch up on news about the pond which we built together the previous summer. There’s now a family of newts, the tadpoles have turned into frogs, the goldfish are fattening up and there’s a big duck with a red beak from the farm across the road who comes and has a morning wash, but the last time he came the pond was frozen over so he slipped and fell on his duck bottom and couldn’t figure out what was happening. The goldfish, all of whose names they both remember, will be too fat to fit in the pond by the time I next come to America to see them, I say.

‘Did you catch the mouse?’ asks the younger. I’d forgotten about the mouse.

‘I caught him and put him in the garden,’ I say. ‘But he came back. He prefers his home behind the kitchen cupboards. But maybe we can catch him again when you next come to England and train him. Think mice can learn the violin?’ She giggles.

‘Mummy says you only come to America on business,’ says the older one.

This is crushing news because it’s so untrue. I’ve never been to America on business, with the exception of this trip, which is hardly business. I can’t bring myself to say their mother is lying to them.

‘Well, perhaps Mummy doesn’t know everything. I always come to America to see you both because I love you and I miss you. And, well… because you can’t get such amazing waffles in England.’

We walk south a few blocks, hand in hand, to the zoo, where we seek out the animals we know from the Just So Stories. They stand inches from an elephant, peer wide-eyed at the snakes in their glass enclosures and make faces at a white-cheeked gibbon.

The penguins steal the show.

It’s cold and we make for the diner for a top-up of hot chocolate. It’s only when we’re on the way home again that I realise one of the girls has lost a mitten. There’ll be hell to pay but there’s no time to retrace our steps. A renewed feeling of dread replaces that of joy as we return to the house.

‘Typical,’ snarls their mother from the far side of the front door. ‘I can’t leave them with you for a single afternoon without something going wrong.’ I do not know what drives this cruelty. I don’t contest it because the girls are looking up at me, wondering whether they should say goodbye, and their faces waver between smiles and expressions of concern.

‘By the way,’ says their mother, ‘there’s riding camp for two weeks in August. You can see them for the last week of the month and we can do make-up time the following summer.’

‘I only have three weeks with the girls this summer. It’s my only chance to have a proper holiday with them. I can’t fly them to England for just a week. I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

There’s a tightening of her jaw and a renewed look of contempt.

‘Fine. If that’s how selfish you want to be. I shouldn’t have expected anything different from you. We can make things difficult too.’

I have no reply to this, so I kiss the girls goodbye, and they step beyond the threshold under their mother’s arm and disappear. Then, as I’m walking back to the taxi, the door opens again and the two of them race out to me for a final hug.

There is a strategy, I’ve discovered, to manage the feeling of devastation I experience when I leave my kids. I put my mind on something different and force it to stay there until the feeling subsides. There’s a radiating sensation of grief in my chest which I know will pass if I let it run its course. I need in the meantime to get back to another world where my feelings cannot be allowed to run riot. As the taxi rolls back to the hotel past the manicured lawns of the perfect homes of Chevy Chase, I force myself to the meeting I’ll be having later with Grace. I wonder what level of clearance she’s been authorised to read me onto. I’ve had top secret clearance since Seethrough reinstated me with the Firm, but it doesn’t mean I’m automatically cleared for what the Americans call an SCI or sensitive compartmented information, or for SAPs – special access programmes, like the Predator missions, the very existence of which is classified.

As a British citizen I can’t get top secret clearance in the US, but can be granted a limited access authorization if it can be shown, which it obviously has been, that a clearable US citizen isn’t available for the same job. This allows me to be read onto the relevant SCIs. The rest is NTK or need to know, which limits access to whatever is necessary for carrying out the task involved. Seethrough has smoothed the process through with his counterparts at Langley, and as Grace has reminded me, somebody loves me on the seventh floor. Clearance isn’t in itself secret, and may even lapse after a given period. But one’s accountability to it is for life. It’s a disturbing thought. I’m comforted by the paradoxical knowledge that at the highest levels of all, as exemplified by the Baroness’s dealings, there’s no such thing as clearance at all, nor any paperwork to support it. Or to deny it. Just conversations in quiet rooms, on benches in public parks, and words exchanged in chance meetings that quite probably never happened.

I have good intentions to go for a swim in the hotel pool, but instead collapse on the bed and sleep fitfully for an hour before waking with a sense of panic at not knowing where I am. When I come down to the lobby, Grace is already there, reading a copy of the Washington Post. I see her in daylight now and realise how blue her eyes are. There’s the same mixture of hardness in her gait, voice and manner, and softness when she smiles or laughs.