Julie Shaw - Blood Ties - Family is not always a place of safety

‘Oh, thanks so much, Dad,’ she said, reaching up to kiss his cheek. ‘I’ll go give it a play soon as I’ve finished down here.’

John smiled at her, clearly pleased to have chosen so well. ‘Wait till your mam’s come downstairs, eh? Only I didn’t tell her I’d bought it, and what with Darren losing all his money this week, she’ll be in a right mood if she thinks I’ve been splashing out on you.’

Kathleen’s cheerful mood dissolved as quickly as beer foam into a bar towel. ‘She’s not my mam!’ she reminded him. ‘And, Dad, it’s my frigging birthday! What does she expect?’

‘Come on, Kathleen,’ he urged. ‘You know how things are. Don’t make trouble. And don’t let her hear you saying she’s not your mam, either. She tries her best for us, love, you know that. You might not always realise, but she does.’

Kathleen bit her lip to prevent the words she wanted to say from spilling out, because all she’d get was the usual gentle lecture – which was still a lecture – about how she was too young to understand the complexities of life and how, once she was older, she’d understand it better, and so on and so on and bloody so on. But how complicated could it be? Irene wore the trousers. Irene bossed her dad around. Her dad let her. That was all there was to know about it.

And, as a consequence, she not only wasn’t going to the pictures, she wasn’t even going to be allowed to enjoy her birthday present – hell, she didn’t even have her own record player to play it on, so had to ‘borrow’ Monica’s, like that was in any way fair! All that, and he still called the cow her ‘mam’. That woman who she’d heard so many times point out to people that no, Monica and Darren were hers, but she wasn’t – she was ‘John’s girl’.

She opened the envelope. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Dad, you’re safe,’ she said, unable to suppress the sarcasm. ‘I won’t be finished in here till after then anyway, will I?’

In answer, he gently patted her, then headed off to the cellar to sort out the barrels. He was already out of sight when she realised what he’d put in the card. ‘Happy birthday’, yes, above the usual couple of lines of printed verse, but underneath he’d written ‘Lots of love from Dad’.

‘What about this?’ she called after him, holding the card up. ‘Am I allowed to put it up, or is this a secret too?’

He popped his head back round the door. ‘What, love?’

‘Is this card a secret, too?’

He looked confused, and she immediately regretted what she’d said. However much he infuriated her, he was still her dad and she loved him.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Go on. You’re fine. The card’s lovely. I’ll pop it up with Aunt Sally’s once I’m done here.’

But all she could think of was how there was anything else to understand in the fact that her ‘mam’ hadn’t even signed her birthday card. How many brain cells did you need to understand that ?

She grabbed the duster again and started attacking the final pump. Happy Birthday to me , she thought grimly.

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