The Long Weekend by Veronica Henry Read Free Book Online

‘but not one of these guys was upset or angry. Although obviously you’d need to be careful.’
    Laura thought about it. She had always presumed her father didn’t know of her existence, but she’d never really considered it from his point of view. Did her mother really have the right to deny him knowledge of her existence, whoever he was? Maybe he hadn’t gone on to have other children. Maybe he too would be delighted to know he had a daughter. Not to know you had a child was peculiar to men – it was an experience no woman could ever share. And so how could a woman really empathise?
    It began to eat away at her. And she began to resent Marina for her arrogance. Surely every child had the right to know her father, and a father to know his daughter? But she knew, absolutely, that she would never be able to worm it out of her.
    ‘I’ll never get Mum to tell me,’ she told Dan. ‘I’ll have to figure it out for myself.’
    He promised to help her in any way he could. And to be there for her, whichever way it went. She began looking for clues in earnest. Rifling through Marina’s drawers when she went round for Sunday lunch. Rummaging through cupboards, shoeboxes, empty suitcases, pulling up pieces of loose carpet. But there was never anything that gave even a hint. Surely if the relationship had had any meaning, which Laura felt it had, she would have kept some relic, some tiny memento? Her mother kept everything – ticket stubs, photos, postcards, programmes, souvenirs. She was a hoarder.
    The only place she hadn’t managed to look was the box file Marina kept her paperwork in – her passport and driving licence and chequebooks. It was kept firmly locked, and Laura had no idea where to find the key.
    Dan laughed. ‘Not a problem,’ he said when she described the lock to him. And so one weekend, when they knew Marina was away, Laura and Dan sneaked into her house with the spare key, and Dan picked the lock of the box file.
    ‘Where did you learn how to do that?’ Laura demanded.
    ‘Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,’ he told her, laughing. And she thought that was probably the moment when her feelings for him tipped from delicate and fragile embryonic love into something more profound. It was the first time in her life that she had felt protected by someone other than her mother. It made her feel warm inside.
    Carefully and meticulously, Laura searched through the contents of the box file and found the clue she was looking for, amidst tax returns and bank statements. A tiny, perfect life drawing of what was clearly a teenage Marina. Carelessly impressionistic but brilliant, it brought to life her slight figure, her full breasts, and a lustrous sheet of black hair falling past her shoulders.
    ‘Wow,’ said Dan. ‘Your mum’s still stunning, but . . . wow.’
    Laura, who was pretty but had suffered all her life from knowing she didn’t have her mother’s arresting aura, smiled wryly. Her boyfriends had often been dumbstruck when they met Marina. Dan had seemed unfazed up till now, but this drawing captured her raw beauty so perfectly that even he couldn’t fail to express admiration.
    She held the drawing with shaking fingers as she deciphered the scrawled signature in the right-hand corner.
    ‘Tony Weston. I think it says Tony Weston.’
    Dan scrutinised it and agreed.
    ‘Probably a pretty common name.’
    ‘Do you think this is my dad? This would have been drawn just before she had me. She had all her hair cut off after I was born, she told me, because I kept pulling it.’ Laura knew she was gabbling. This was the closest she had ever come to unveiling the secret. ‘Do you think it’s him?’
    ‘Well,’ said Dan. ‘They were obviously quite close, judging by the way she’s looking at him . . .’
    The drawing was intimate, there was no denying that. Laura swallowed. Tony Weston might be her father. She couldn’t take the picture with her, so she photocopied it, then put it