Harry Sparkes
Harry looked up at the sound of his name being called and smiled when he spied Faith Jackson thundering down the path towards him. He watched her clumsy gait, carefully; hoping the entire time that she didn’t fall. However, for a child who appeared so ungainly she was surprisingly graceful.
She beamed up at him as she came to a stop and he ruffled her brown hair and handed her the pink trowel that no one else was allowed to use. “Good afternoon, Miss Faith,” he said, cheerily. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Hello, Mr Harry. I would have been earlier, but Mam was ages chatting at the school gate,” she explained gravely in her heavy lisping drawl.
Harry looked up and smiled at Faith’s mother who had finally caught up with her daughter. She looked flustered, trailing Faith’s school coat and bag over her arm.
“Hi Harry,” Sadie said, grinning warmly. “How are you keeping? Are you eating properly?”
“Same as ever,” he replied, gruffly. “I can cope, Sadie. You shouldn’t fuss over an old codger like me. Wasn’t I used to feeding myself anyway?”
“You’re not an old codger,” she scolded. “And I don’t mind feeding you a few times a week, Harry.”
Harry turned away and smiled down at Faith. “How was school?”
“It was wonderbubble,” Faith answered, enthusiastically. “But Miles said I couldn’t be Maria’s friend because I’m not the same as them.”
Harry glanced up at Sadie in time to see her wince at Faith’s words. He knew her greatest fear was Faith being rejected by the people around her. He also knew that if she was going to give Faith a chance at a fulfilled life, despite her disabiliity, rejection was the hurdle they would have to face over and over again. Damn, Sadie herself knew that already.
Faith hadn’t noticed the tension creeping over the two adults. She smiled and said, “Maria said she didn’t care if I don’t have brown skin the same as them, she loves me anyway.”
Harry laughed with relief. “Maria sounds like a nice little girl.”
Faith threw her mother a sideways glance then leant in towards Harry. “I like Maria a lot and I love Miles,” she confided, quietly. "But sometimes he's horrible to me."
Sadie rolled her eyes, smiled and moved away so Faith could speak freely to her confidante.
“When I was a little boy, the girl I was horrible to the most was the one I secretly loved,” Harry mock whispered. Faith knelt down beside him and began to help dig up the weeds that had sprung up over the weekend.
“I wished he does love me,” Faith replied. “I love him up to the moon. I want to marry him one day.”
Harry felt a lump catch in his throat when he glanced down at the little girl next to him. Did she even know she was so different to the people around her? How could he encourage her dreams without giving her false hope? She was the epitome of optimism and hope, and she saw no reason why she couldn’t grow up and live her dreams. In so many ways she was the same as every little girl of five, with the same hopes and aspirations. How would Sadie deal with that as Faith grew up?
He had questioned the wisdom of sending Faith to the local primary school, fearing that she would be bullied by children who didn’t understand Down's Syndrome. Now, he wondered if they had done her wrong by giving her high expectations for a life she could not possibly live. He hoped Faith wouldn’t be crushed by unrealistic dreams for a future that was out of her reach.
But then what did he know? He was an old fuddy-duddy stuck in the past. There were equality acts now and society had come along in leaps and bounds since he had been a young father. Faith might well end up living a relatively normal life for all he knew. Besides, what was normal anyway? It was all perspective. Attitudes changed, life moved on and people progressed. Tolerance and equality might well be prevalent by the time Faith was an adult. Life seemed to move in the blink of an eye these days, Harry thought wearily.
“Mr Harry, do you miss Mrs Sparkes?” Faith asked after a few minutes of silent digging. “Mam said she’s gone to Heaven.” Harry glanced at Sadie, who was sitting on a bench a few metres away reading through Faith’s school letters.
Harry stood up and straightened his back with a groan. “That will have been the last place she went,” he muttered with a grimace. He thought of Joy Sparkes and felt himself tense as an image of her frowning bitter face flashed across his mind. He hated that look on her face and he hated that he couldn’t remember the beautiful girl he had loved, the girl he had married. Oh, how she had suited her married name back in those first few joyful years of their relationship. She had been a sparky joyous vibrant young woman, always smiling and happy.
Nothing at all like the bitter old woman she had become as the years had passed.
“I don’t miss her,” Faith said, truthfully. “She didn’t like me.”
“She didn’t like me much either, in the end.” Harry chuckled, softly. “It doesn’t matter though, it was mutual.”
Faith looked at him inquisitively. “What’s mutual?”
Harry smiled. “It means we felt the same way about it. I don’t miss her either, Faith.”
She gestured to him and herself, “So we’re mutual?”
“Yes, Faith, we are.” He glanced over at Sadie and held his hand out to the little girl. “That’s enough weeding today, your mam looks tired and I bet you have homework to do.”
“A reading book and a number game,” she announced, proudly.
“You can’t read yet, can you?” Harry threw a questioning look at Sadie who was walking towards them.
“You can read the pink books, can’t you, Fai?” She smiled lovingly at her daughter, then at Harry. “She’s doing really well there. It’s a good school.”
“Well I never,” Harry murmured, wonderingly. “I must go in and get my supper on. I’ll see you two ladies tomorrow.”
“Call me if you need anything,” Sadie said, quietly, touching his arm fleetingly.
“I will,” he promised.
He shuffled into his flat, sighing. He hated his slow stumbling pace, now the years had shrunk him from the big strong man he had once been to the bent over old codger he had become. He resented not being able to stride around the place anymore. He detested his failing eyesight and the aches that plagued him. Sometimes he felt as if he was aware of every single organ in his body as they aged.
When he was a young man he had hoped for a long life. He had been youthful, vital and virile with the belief that the years ahead of him would be kind and he would never feel like an old man. Now he considered that young man a foolish idiot. What good was a long life if everything ached and every day was a massive pain in the back, hips and knees? What were long hours spent doing simple tasks, if not a huge waste of the little time he had left? What was the point in the golden years of old age if you and your wife ended up detesting each other?
He should have hoped for a glorious heroic death as an officer in the armed forces, serving Queen and country. He should have gone out with a bang when he was a man in his prime, instead of wasting away for the last forty years. He had spent over half his life feeling his body wind down and wear out whilst he and Joy looked at each other with hatred in their fading eyes.
Harry switched the radio on and pottered around the kitchen, preparing himself a simple tea of sardines on toast. Joy had always hated the smell of fish, complaining and throwing windows open if he had dared to open a tin of sardines, or cook kippers for breakfast. She would grouse about it all day in her shrewish tone with her brow wrinkled and a frown etched on her face. It had been easier for Harry to go without. Since her death, six weeks before, he had eaten fish four times a week. His small act of rebellion in a home that had been predominantly Joy’s all their married life.
He’d also thrown out all of her horrible creepy china dolls that had lined the sitting room walls. The pleasure he had felt when he’d slung them in the bin and used her antimacassars as dishcloths had scared him a little. He’d realised he was in danger of appearing slightly potty and spiteful. Certainly, his daughter-in-law had been shocked at his brutal culling of Joy’s belongings.
How could he explain the depths of loathing he had felt about the many things Joy had treasured? It was all tat that collected dust and gave the impression of a normal home. It was his house too, yet he had spent forty years hating every moment spent in it, surrounded by the trivial rubbish Joy had tried to fill her life with. Perhaps it had worked for her, but for him it had only served as a reminder of where they had gone wrong.
Why shouldn’t he make the house his home now Joy was gone? But he couldn’t say that to his daughter- in-law. Susan would be unable to understand a lifetime spent hating and loving someone at the same time. She was of the generation that divorced and moved on if things didn’t work out. They didn’t spend years clinging to the same life raft as the other person, whilst desperately hoping they’d let go before you did. So Harry had mumbled that it was too painful to look at Joy’s things when every time he did, it reminded him she was gone. Susan had patted his arm consolingly and offered to take stuff to the charity shop for him. Harry didn’t tell her he’d slung it all in the bin.
The truth was, the emptied flat reminded him she was really gone. Her things surrounding him made him think she would walk in any moment. He couldn’t relax when he expected to hear her barging through the place and her voice grating on every nerve in his body with her constant bitching and moaning.
She hadn’t always been like that; he thought sadly, as he buttered his toast and carefully placed the sardines on top with shaky gnarled hands. For the first eight years of their marriage she had been happy, loving and fun. He had ached for her and missed her madly when he was away with the army. The love he felt for her had only been intensified when their sons, Malcolm and Neil, were born. Joy had been his best friend and he respected her. She was strong and supportive, holding their family together while he was away for months at a time.
Harry had never imagined a day when he wouldn’t love her madly.
He sat at the kitchen table and ate his sardines on toast, remembering how happy he had been the day Joy told him she was pregnant with their third child. They had danced around this very kitchen a few months after their seventh wedding anniversary and Joy had told him she just knew that this time they would have a little girl. She would be a beautiful little girl to complete their family.
Harry didn’t notice the tears that slid down his face onto his supper.
Olivia Sparkes was born in 1968, whilst Harry was stationed in Germany for six months. Joy sent a couple of photos, a letter, a lock of their daughter's hair and a card from the boys too. He wrote back telling Joy how proud he was of her, how sorry he was that he couldn't be with her and that he couldn't wait to be home in a couple of months.
He received no word back.
No cards, no letters, no photos. Harry was beside himself with worry. They had no telephone back then at Vivi Misti and no family close by. There was no one Harry could contact to ask them to check on his wife and children. When he arrived back in the UK he had raced from the airfield to the flat in Porth Kerensa, breaking all manner of traffic laws and speed limits in his urgency to get home to Cornwall.
When he burst into the flat he was struck by the darkness and silence of the place. There were no rambunctious boys tearing around as was their wont at six in the evening. No sound of dinner being prepared in the kitchen and no fractious baby crying to be fed. Only the low volume of the television in the sitting room alerted him to the fact he wasn’t alone in the flat. Harry put his bag down in the dark hallway and hurried into the lounge.
He found Malcolm and Neil sitting on the floor in the dark, watching the news. The kitchen was empty and in darkness. There was no sign of Joy.
“Boys, where is your mam?” He switched the light on and the children blinked, rapidly, and looked at him as if he were a stranger.
“In her bedroom,” Malcolm answered, quietly. There was no pleasure in his eyes at seeing Harry finally home again. Something was wrong and dread flowed through Harry’s veins as he went in search of Joy.
She was sitting on their bed facing the wall when he walked in. Her back was ramrod straight; every muscle in her body went rigid when he entered the room. A quick glance around the room confirmed the lack of baby furniture and paraphernalia that had been squeezed into every available space when he had left for Germany six months before. The room looked positively spacious now.
He thought he was prepared. He thought he was ready to hear the news of his daughter’s death before he’d even met her. It all seemed so painfully obvious to him. The boys’ muted grief, the radio silence Joy had inflicted on him and the emptied bedroom shouted the news before Joy could say it. He was braced for it and already composing the words he would whisper that would salve his beloved wife’s loss. He would take her in his arms and apologise for not being at home and with her when she needed him most. He would hold her lovingly when she cried on his shoulder.
“She’s gone, Harry,” Joy said, brusquely. “I put her into care.”
“You did what?” Harry asked dazed, his mouth gaping open. The words were so different to what he’d expected her to say that they made no sense at all. He stared at the back of her head, trying to process the information. “Why would you do that?”
Joy jumped up and turned to look at him with fury and hatred blazing in her eyes. So much hatred that Harry almost flinched. “Because I didn’t want her,” she hissed at him. “She wasn’t right, Harry. I didn’t want her here with me and my boys. I couldn’t bear to look at her. They took her away a week after she was born and put her into an institution.”
Harry gazed transfixed at the wild eyed angry woman that had replaced the Joy he had known for years. He whispered, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me, it was her that was wrong,” she screamed at him. “She was a Mongol, Harry. You gave me a freak for a daughter.”
He hit her then; a heavy solid slap that neither of them foresaw. Joy fell sideways onto the bed with the force of his palm connecting with her face. The cracking noise of it rang around the room, reverberating in the silence that followed. Harry had never hit his wife, but he had never hated her as much as he did right then.
“This is not happening, Joy,” he growled. “Do you hear me? Tomorrow Olivia is coming home. I don’t care what you say is wrong with her, she’s our daughter and you can’t just give her away without my permission.”
Joy laughed harshly, muffled by the counterpane. “It’s too late, Harry. She’s a ward of court now and they placed her in an institution. All the paperwork is signed.” She sat up and glared at him defiantly. “I forged your signature; they think you didn’t want her either.”
Nothing else Joy ever said to him in all the years after hurt him as much as those seven spitefully uttered words. He stared at the stranger before him and so help him God, he wished he’d hit her harder. “I’ll take her out of there myself,” he whispered.
“And ruin all our lives?” Joy was bitter. “The boys will be bullied at school, people will shun me in the streets and she’ll be a milestone around my neck forever. My neck, Harry, not yours. You’ll be away in bloody Germany while I watch my life being drained away looking after your freak of nature. No, I won’t be a part of that, Harry. I won’t.”
He watched her scrunching the perfect counterpane beneath her. Both hands were twisting feverishly; plucking and pulling at the blanket.
“She’s our daughter,” he shouted. “She the boys’ sister, for God’s sake.”
“I don’t care,” Joy muttered. “I don’t care and I don’t want her here.”
“You’re a bitch, Joy.” The venom in his voice shocked him, yet she didn’t recoil from it. If anything it seemed to feed her self-righteous anger.
“Do you think you’ll get away from it?” Her voice was calm, but she was still twisting the blanket in her white hands. “Do you think you’ll bring her back here, stay and play ‘hero daddy’ for a few weeks, before you pack your kit bag and swan off back to work? It will be so easy for you not having to live with the looks, the snide comments and the insults. You think you can pretend she’s normal?”
“Of course not,” Harry replied, indignantly.
“It will follow you there, Harry. People will find out about your deformed daughter, and then how important and revered do you think you’ll be? You’ll be a commanding officer with no respect from his men, a laughing stock amongst the troops. Good old Harry Sparkes, with his freak daughter,” she sneered.
“Stop calling her that,” he whispered, hating the truth of her caustic words.
“It’s true, Harry. We made a freak. You can hit me again if you like. If that makes you feel better then batter me black and blue, but it won’t change anything. I don’t love her, I don’t want her and I will not stay here and let you ruin our lives if you insist on bringing her back here.”
“You did love her,” he said mournfully, sinking onto their bed opposite her. “You sent me a letter saying how much you loved her and how beautiful she was.”
“That was before,” Joy replied, simply, as if it were obvious. “When the doctor told me she was a Down's Syndrome baby I felt it all drain away from me, like someone pulled the plug out of my heart. When I looked at her I felt nothing but disgust. Can’t you understand that, Harry?”
He understood exactly what she meant, for the same thing was happening to him with every word she spoke. He didn’t love this cold hard-hearted woman in the room with him.
“I’m going to get her back,” he vowed.
“And do what?” She asked the question with genuine interest. “Will you leave the army and live alone with your deformed daughter? Make no mistake, Harry, if you choose Olivia then you lose me and the boys.”
She’d stood up and plucked a tissue from the box on her dressing table. He watched as she blew her nose, checked her face in the mirror and straightened her clothes. “I’m going to make some dinner. Please, come and join us, Harry. We are glad to have you home, you know.”
“You’re insane,” he whispered, staring at her coldly.
“Harry, people like us don’t get divorced and men like you don’t bring up their daughters alone, especially the handicapped ones. Olivia will be safe and cared for in a place with other people like her and we’ll carry on with our lives. One day, you’ll see that I’m right and this is the best thing for her.”
“So we just sweep this under the carpet and pretend nothing ever happened?”
“That’s exactly what we’ll do.” She was calm and composed now. Her anger and hatred from earlier seemed to have vanished. She touched his arm as she walked around the bed and bent down to kiss his cheek, ignoring the way he winced. “I’ll send one of the boys in to get you when supper is ready. Why don’t you have a nap in the meantime? Welcome home, Harry.”
“Welcome home, Harry,” he whispered, smiling grimly to himself as he recalled that night so many years ago. He could still feel iciness of her kiss on his cheek.
Pushing his plate away he glanced over at the only picture he had of grown up Olivia Sparkes. He had placed the photo frame on the sideboard the morning after Joy had died.
Olivia was smiling in the image, celebrating her twenty-first birthday, surrounded by her friends at the Elizabeth Thomas Home for adults with learning difficulties. Those people had been the only family she’d ever known, Harry thought sadly. She’d never really grasped that Harry was her father. He was simply a nice gentleman who came to visit her every other weekend when he was home on leave. She was always pleased to see him, but never aware of who he truly was to her.
Joy had hated the fact he’d tried to form some kind of relationship with their daughter. She believed it was his way of trying to punish her for sending Olivia away. He didn’t understand her need to make it a personal insult. He was a father trying to love his daughter, why did she have to take it so personally? She’d won after all; he had stayed with her and the boys and allowed her to banish Olivia. Why couldn’t she let him find some peace with the decision she had made for all of them?
Harry sighed and stood carefully. He gathered his plate and cutlery up and took it into the kitchen to wash and stack on the draining board. His eldest son, Malcolm, had raised his eyebrows when he’d seen the picture of Olivia on the sideboard. Harry had met Malcolm’s eyes squarely, almost daring him to say something about the woman whose family had denied her existence. Malcolm had pursed his lips and said nothing, however, Harry felt sure his son had simply filed it away for later discussion.
Harry had tried to keep hold of Olivia and he’d ended up losing his sons. Weekends spent with Olivia had been weekends not spent playing football with his boys. He knew Joy would never allow him to take the boys with him to see their sister. The boys had spent weekends aware of the tension between their parents, the bitterness in Joy’s voice and her eyes searing a dislike of Harry in their hearts. He had hated her for making the boys choose between their parents.
Now Joy was dead and the boys were grown men who had no relationship with their father. Had Joy been right all those years ago when she had said the best thing to do was walk away and forget Olivia? Would his life have been different? Could he have found his way back to the love he had once felt for Joy if he had allowed her to make the past something that had never happened?
Harry had no one, except Faith Jackson. A little girl with no blood link to him was the only person left in the world who loved him. She was his salvation. She was his way of making up for failing Olivia. Joy had accused him of being selfish for taunting her with Faith and the things he did for her. She had said that he was just using Faith to salve his own guilty conscience. Perhaps she had been right to start with, but now he loved the little girl with all his heart.
People admired the things he had done for Faith Jackson over the years. They praised him for the time he spent with her teaching her about their garden. Sadie called him their angel, telling everyone she knew all about Harry Sparkes and how wonderful he was with Faith. He had even been nominated for a community award because of the hundreds of hours he had spent working on Faith’s sensory garden. No one had ever really known why he felt compelled to do it. Especially not Joy.
The garden at Vivi Misti had been a dumping ground for years. It was a neglected shared piece of land at the back of the L-shaped building that no one used for anything other than a communal rubbish dump. It was where Philippa Duffy let her dog out to toilet and a graveyard for broken appliances and unwanted furniture. Harry had detested it.
Then Sadie Jackson in the flat next door had given birth to her Down's Syndrome daughter, Faith. As the months passed it was hard not to hear the arguments late at night between Sadie and her husband. She tried to keep her voice low, but Harry often heard Marcus shouting and berating their daughter's condition as if it was Sadie's fault. He had left them by the time Faith was two years old, and their teenage son followed him a few months later. It had been even harder not to listen to Sadie crying in the dead of night.
For a couple of years Harry had tried to ignore the thought that niggled in his head. He had pushed the memory of the sensory garden at the Elizabeth Thomas Home away and tried not to worry about the newly divorced mother and her little girl shut away in the flat next door. However, eventually it became too much for him and he started to sketch his own plan for a similar garden, designed to maximise Faith’s experience of nature with sights, sounds, scents and vivid colours.
Harry thought of the wasteland at the back of Vivi Misti and he thought of defeated hopeless Sadie Jackson and her disabled daughter. He thought about how badly he had failed Olivia because he had been a coward. He could help Sadie, he could help change her and Faith’s life with more than smiles in the shared hallway and a lollipop stashed in his coat pocket.
Harry applied for funding by writing begging letters for grants, asking for charity hand outs and writing to his MP. He happened to mention it to the local vicar one Sunday and a couple of days later a woman in her mid-thirties turned up on the doorstep offering her help. Rachel Burton, a landscape gardener and new to the village had been invaluable in getting hold of donated plants and equipment. Finally he and Rachel had gone to Sadie and told her of their plans for the garden come the spring. Harry showed her the designs and a letter from all the residents supporting the idea. Sadie had wept grateful tears and thanked them profusely.
It took two months to transform the dumping ground into a beautiful sanctuary designed to stimulate every single one of Faith’s senses as she grew. He and Rachel worked hard and long into the evenings, only stopping when Rachel’s gentleman friend, the good Doctor Gillis arrived with dinner for them all. When it was finally finished the local newspaper sent a reporter to take a picture of Harry, Rachel and Faith in their wonderful new garden.
Joy had grimaced when she’d seen it. She’d said he was a vindictive old fool who only lived to make her miserable. Harry knew he could never make her understand, so he didn’t try. She honestly believed it was his way of trying to punish her. Another way to rub her face in the fact he could never forgive her for forcing him to abandon Olivia. Their marriage had become a battlefield where both sides believed they were the righteous one. There could be no ceasefire, they had fought for too long.
Joy’s death had heralded the end of the long bitter war they had waged against each other for forty-two years. They had spent a lifetime loving to hate each other and hating the love that had poisoned them from the inside out. A prison that Harry had walked out of the morning Joy died.
Even in her final hours they had found no words of forgiveness for one another. There were no last words to soothe each other’s souls, or remind them of the love they had once shared. Joy died believing she had done the right thing for Harry and their sons. She’d had no regrets about her decision.
Only Harry had lived with regrets.
Regrets that even Faith Jackson could not alleviate.
Harry made a cup of cocoa and took it out to the garden. He loved any time of day out there, except the heat of midday. His favourite time of day was early morning, but dusk was the time he sat and relaxed. He enjoyed listening to the sprinklers on their twenty minute cycle and feeling the fresh coolness of a watered garden. He sat on the wooden bench next to his patio doors and gazed out over the oasis he and Rachel Burton had created.
“You look like a king surveying his kingdom,” Philippa Duffy said, smiling as she stepped out of the communal doors and walked over to join him on the bench.
He grinned when she patted his thigh. “Are you alright, Phil?”
“Ah, you know what it’s like, Harry. This getting old business tires me out.”
He laughed and covered her hand with his. “You’re a spring chicken yet, Phil.”
“And you’re a silver tongued devil, even now,” she replied, playfully.
They had been friends since she had moved into the block of flats, thirty-six years before. Joy had hated the friendly open Londoner and her half-caste daughter instantly. To Harry, Joy’s dislike of their neighbour had seemed yet another good reason to like Philippa. Sometimes Harry thought that all the decisions he had made in the last forty years had been based on whether it would irritate the hell out of his wife.
“You had fish for dinner again then,” she said, nodding towards his open windows.
“Old habits die hard,” he murmured.
He squeezed her hand gently and wondered when her hands had become so faded and wrinkled with age. They were still as soft as silk and elegant with beautifully polished and manicured nails. He recalled Joy’s hands; rough from detergents and her fingernails bitten to the quick. He sighed and closed his eyes briefly. Philippa had only ever seemed to highlight Joy’s failings in Harry’s eyes.
From the moment he’d met her he had admired Philippa’s grace, elegance and the wit she charmed him with. Of course, the man in him had also appreciated her beauty and curvy buxom figure. She was so unlike thin cold Joy Sparkes, who spent her life in her housecoats with a bare face, lank hair and rapier sharp tongue.
The thing he liked most about Philippa was her devotion to her daughter. He doubted there had ever been a second that she’d considered giving away her half-caste child. Philippa shunned the shunners and met their sneers with her own icy condemnation of their narrow minded bigotry. Philippa was a mother bear protecting her cub from people like Joy, with a righteous fury that Harry loved. He envied her courage and he knew he paled into insignificance next to Philippa Duffy. He contented himself with bathing in her confident radiance.
Of course, Joy had been convinced he was having an affair with their attractive upstairs neighbour. Harry had pitied her ignorance. He and Joy had ceased to be a loving close couple long before Philippa had moved to Vivi Misti. He’d had a few affairs, none on his own doorstep though. He thought too much of Philippa to put her in such an awkward position. He had simply loved her quietly and secretly from downstairs.
Now, though, Joy was gone. Philippa and he were still very much alive and free to do what they wanted.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, suddenly.
Harry laughed awkwardly. “I doubt it.”
“Silly man,” she answered, smiling. “I’ve always known what you were thinking, Harry Sparkes. You have the most expressive face of any men I’ve ever met, and believe me I’ve met a few. You’ve never been able to hide those thoughts from me.”
“You’re so full of sh-,”
“Shhhh,” she finished, laughing. “It’s true. I know you hated my dog all those years, you just pretended to like her because it irritated Joy. I know that really you thought she was a yappy little rat dog.”
“I pretended to like her because you’re my friend,” Harry replied, smiling. “Joy hating it was an added bonus. Anyway that proves nothing.”
“I pretended to tolerate your wife for the same reason,” Philippa murmured, nudging him gently with her shoulder. She sighed and said, “You were thinking that now might be the right time to finally make that move on me that you’ve been imagining for thirty-six years.”
Harry felt his face flush red and the blush only deepened when she chuckled.
“You’re a witch, Philippa Duffy.”
“Yes, I am and I should go and check on my cauldron before it bubbles over.” She withdrew her hand from his and stood up. “Don’t sit out here for too long, Harry, its getting cold.”
He looked up at her, his brown eyes watery. “Phil, is it too late?”
“This old house is full of secrets,” she told him, carefully. “Despite all these years of friendship I never knew why you and Joy hated each other, and you never knew why I moved here with Natasha. Secrets we expect to take to the grave. How can we be more than this, Harry?”
Harry thought of Olivia and the shame he felt whenever she crossed his mind. He had never told Philippa or anyone else about Olivia. He had never spoken about her. Was he too old to start now? He gazed at Philippa and smiled sadly. “I’ll tell you everything, Phil, if you want me too.”
She stroked his face and bent down to kiss his cheek softly. “Oh, Harry Sparkes.”
He caught hold of her hand. “What are you thinking?”
“You need to learn how to read my face as well as I can read yours,” she teased, stepping back. "I was thinking that sometimes the greatest love affairs are life long friendships." She smiled and turned away.
Harry watched her walk back into the building. She was still so proud and elegant looking. Not for the first time Harry wondered what his life would have been like if he’d met a woman like Philippa, instead of Joy.
The photo of Olivia seemed to call to him when he walked back into his flat. Her smiling happy face made his heart wrench. That birthday party had been the last time he’d seen his daughter. The child that society and medical science had written off made it to twenty-one and two weeks. She had died of heart failure fifteen days after her birthday.
In the months after her death Harry tried to catch Joy grieving. He couldn’t help but hope that somewhere in her heart she could find some sadness that the child she had given birth to was dead. But he never saw it, never caught even a glimpse of sorrow. He found himself hating her more than ever.
He wished Olivia had been a child of the twenty-first century. He wished she had been a child with a chance, like Faith. In today’s world fathers did divorce mothers and bring up children on their own. Children with Down's Syndrome were encouraged to live a normal life and were not hidden from society. If only Olivia had been blessed with a mother like Philippa, or Sadie.
If only Olivia had been blessed with a stronger father.
Harry wondered if he would really find the courage to tell Philippa how weak and cowardly he had been all those years ago.