‘Dad we need to talk.’ Francis has been following the story of his daughter’s unravelling life, he did not expect to hear from her, they have not spoken in twenty years, since she refused his offer to walk her down the aisle. Despite her position in the company their paths hardly ever cross and when they do cross, no words are exchanged. In meetings she speaks around him or indirectly but that is as far as it goes. Evelyn destroyed this family decades ago and now that she is gone, he shoulders this heartbreak alone. It is likely part of what killed her.
‘What about?’ Francis leaned into his chair looking at his son, he knows what about.
‘You know what about don’t play dumb and mum is no longer here for you to his behind.’
‘I’d watch your tone if I were you.’
Emerson laughed cynically.
Francis knows this mood of his son; he will not be fobbed this time. ‘Let’s go up to the library, this is not a conversation I want to have here.’
He walked up to the library his son trailing behind him echoing his heavy footsteps in the house that is now too big for one, too quiet and too stark. Was it always like this growing up? Emerson only ever remembered being happy here, a fun childhood like any other child but at some point in their teenage years things turned cold and sour, when his sister went off to University in Scotland and her returns home were few and far between and when she came home, it was to no peace because there was always something for her to rebel against.
‘Why aren’t you worried about Ife? Why aren’t you saying something?’
‘Because this is not what she would want.’
‘She’s your daughter and she’s going through something publicly and you tell me that is not what she would want? A father worried for his daughter? What did you and mum do?’
Francis’ eyes flash with anger, anger he kept buried for more than twenty years, ‘don’t you dare tar me with the same brush. I warned your mother, I told her not to drive a wedge between me and my daughter but she would not listen. It was always about what she wanted!’
‘What about you? Why didn’t you ever stand up for her?’
‘Why did you think we were separated?’
‘What? You weren’t separated, you lived tog-’
‘In different wings of the house. She wanted to keep up appearances otherwise everything we built and had inherited would fall apart. So we had an understanding.’
‘Fuck.’ Emerson’s skin prickled with goose pimples, cold washed down the back of his neck like he never felt. And the fire was on. ‘What happened between you and mum?’
‘You want to know what happened? Ask your sister’s mother-in-law.’ With that Francis walks out of the library, needing peace where he can mourn the loss of his daughter away from the world. He missed her something awful and could never forgive his late wife for what she did to them.
Emerson did not move for a spell; paralysed by all his father said and hadn’t said before he left him alone.
All her life Ife existed in the context of the people in her life. At age twenty-one she was a wife, at twenty-three she became a mummy and an art expert. From birth, she was the daughter from whom much was expected. At five years old she was a best friend with the best humans on the planet or so she thought. At twenty-seven she toed the line and went into the family business having “wasted” too much time on that “art business” in the words of her parents. She was gifted with a brain for business and eye for creativity, so she fit into the mammoth of the family enterprise. At twenty-eight she became the politician’s wife in addition, when Tristian became an MP. She has drifted along her life, doing her duty to her husband and country, standing by him; whilst he went off and conquered the country with his vision, she played his second fiddle to him. She was happy enough. Her life was full with the children, and her work and Tristan’s ambitions. When the children started to flee the nest to university and finding their way in the world, her world grew to encompass her husband’s vision.
At forty-three she is still mum, friend, sister, daughter, politician’s wife. None of these labels are the essence of who she truly is. Who was she really? She thought of her brother Emerson, growing up in the same house which had been a different experience for both of them. Their mother had chipped away at her until she became someone he likely could not remember growing up with. Their relationship growing up was happy, they had each other’s back until they left for University; he to Oxford and her to St Andrews. Their mother wanted Ife to go to Cambridge, but she turned down an offer of a place there, and headed to St Andrews instead, far enough away from home. And she just kept getting farther away at Vassar and Harvard. Even when she had the twins, first and second set, Ife did not go home.
Who is she? She couldn’t begin to tell Giuseppe as she sits opposite him. Today she is the grieving daughter conflicted at the fact that she has felt nothing since the death of her mother, she attended the funeral, accepted the condolences but has not been able to grieve her mother since she died holding her hand in the hospital. Comment sections called her a bitch, cold, superior… chipping away at her person until she no longer appeared to be human to them, just a carcass of blood vessels encased in the thinnest of glass that will crack any moment now. She’d shown the world her heart by being the perfect politician’s wife and of service to them and still they revel in her misery.
At some point the labels did not apply, simply noise from an outside crowd, what matters is that she finds herself before the glass smashes and break the black ice encasing her heart and nothing is left of it. She must hold on to it, to love otherwise what was all this for?
Love… she’d had it. All of it.