What Meg Said - 1. What Meg Said

She calls him Uncle Jacob at first. She’s introduced to him just after Christmas, a few months before her fourth birthday, and she instantly loves him. He’s fun, and smiles a lot, and says strange things that cause Daddy to glare at him and roll his eyes. And he reads the best bedtime stories. The first weekend he’s there with them, she draws him a picture of the three of them and a dragon, and declares, in the way that only almost-four-year-olds can, that he’s welcome to come visit them whenever he likes. He promises to hang the picture above his desk at work.

He does return, his visits becoming more and more frequent over the course of the next year, until one day Daddy sits her down and asks her, ‘Meg, how would you feel about Uncle Jacob coming to live with us?’

She thinks this over very carefully. ‘Daddy,’ she says, ‘is Uncle Jacob your boyfriend?’

He looks surprised, and a little bit embarrassed, before telling her that yes, he supposes that he is, and how does she feel about that?

Meg shrugs. ‘That’s fine. He can live with us. But it would be weird for me to keep calling him Uncle Jacob.’

So she decides to start calling hip Pappy. Meg now has a Mummy, a Daddy and a Pappy. When she informs Mummy of this arrangement, she gets the distinct impressuib that she disapproves, but she doesn’t say anything, and Meg is happy. When Mummy remarries some months later, Meg calls her husband Greg. Greg’s nice, but he’s no Pappy.

When she starts school, things become a little bit more complicated. They’re supposed to draw pictures of their families, and then talk about them. Meg draws two houses. In front of one, she draws Mummy and Greg, and Greg’s Bull Mastiff Peaches, and in front of the other, she draws Daddy and Pappy. She draws herself in the middle, looking happy, because she is happy. Meg knows her family is different, but it’s her family, and she knows they all love her. She explains to her class that Mummy is married to Greg, and that Daddy lives with Pappy, and that she lives with Mummy and Greg most of the time and with Daddy and Pappy every other weekend and some week nights sometimes when it’s convenient.

Between lessons, a boy named Patrick corners her and tells her that kids have mothers and fathers, and that her mother’s husband should be her Pappy, not her father’s friend. She tells him, very patiently, that Pappy is Daddy’s boyfriend, they sleep in the same bed and everything.

‘Men can’t have boyfriends!’ Patrick shouts angrily. ‘Men have girlfriends and women have boyfriends!’

Meg isn’t quite sure what happened, but the next thing she knows Patrick is on the ground and she’s hitting him and yelling at him to take that back or she will bloody well pull out his hair and knock his stupid teeth in.

The school tries to call Mummy, who doesn’t answer her phone just then, but they manage to get hold of Daddy, who is unfortunately in a very important meeting with a client but promises to be there as soon as he can. In the meantime, he sends Pappy over. Pappy works from home. He’s writing a book.

Meg is just fine until she sees him. She’s sitting calmly on a bench outside the headmistress’s office, swinging her legs and not looking at anyone, but then Pappy walks in, all cosy blue jumper and messy dark hair, and she immediately starts to cry, and says she’s sorry, she didn’t mean to hit Patrick, she just got so angry!

Pappy hugs her, the way only Pappy can. Even Daddy doesn’t give hugs like this. He shushes her and says, ‘Hey, it’s okay, Half-pint. You’re okay.’

‘He . . . he said—’ She’s sobbing uncontrollably now and can’t quite seem to form words properly. ‘He said you weren’t really my Pappy, and that Daddies can’t have boyfriends, and I—I—I got so angry and I don’t know what happened!’

‘Shh, pet, don’t worry,’ he tells her softly. ‘You’re a good girl. You’re a good girl for wanting to defend me. Just maybe try not to do it quite that way next time, yeah?’ He smiles at her, and she laughs through her tears. ‘Daddy will be here soon, and then we can go home,’ Pappy says. ‘Mummy can come get you at ours later.’

‘I love you, Pappy.’

‘I love you too, Meg.’

When Mummy comes to pick her up that afternoon, she and Daddy have a row. Mummy accuses him of ‘instilling bad values’ and ‘putting her in danger by exposing her’ and a whole bunch of other things Meg doesn’t really understand. She sits in her room, trying not to cry. Pappy comes in and hugs her until they’re done shouting.

In the car on the way home, Mummy says something about how ‘Jacob is a bad influence on you, young lady’. That makes Meg so angry she wants to hit someone again, but then she remembers what Pappy told her, so instead of shouting she calmly says, ‘I love Pappy. He’s one of the bestest people in the world, and he talks to me like I’m a person.’ After that, Mummy doesn’t say another word about Pappy.

* * *

When Meg is seven, Mummy and Greg have a baby. It’s a boy. His name is Thomas. A couple of years after that, they have another boy, named Daniel, and a year after that, a little girl named Charlotte joins the family. Meg is ten years old now, and starts spending Thursday nights at Daddy and Pappy’s, every week, in addition to every other weekend.

When she’s eleven, and she’s started calling Daddy and Pappy Dad and Pa, they get married in a small civil ceremony. The only people present, other than the three of them, are Meg’s Nan, Pa’s parents and his sister and her family, and a couple of Dad and Pa’s friends, including Pa’s old flatmate Darren. Afterwards, they go out to dinner at a fancy restaurant, and Dad and Pa kiss more than Meg thinks she’s ever seen them do before. She feels strangely proud of them.

She talks to her new cousins. Jamie is her age, and Gemma is a couple of years older. She’s met them before and all, but back then they were Pa’s niece and nephew. Now they’re properly her cousins, and she likes them much better than she likes her cousins on her mother’s side, who are snooty and a little bit mean and just somehow, inexplicably, the wrong sort of people. Jamie and Gemma are fun, and clever. Gemma knows everything, and Meg aspires to be like her.

‘Did it ever bother you?’ Gemma asks her curiously. ‘That Uncle Jacob and your dad were a couple, I mean?’

‘No,’ Meg replies truthfully. ‘Not that I can remember, anyway. Feels like Pa’s always been around, you know? I can’t properly remember when he wasn’t. And I know I’ve always liked him.’ She sighs. ‘I like him better than Greg, to be honest, and I like him better than my half siblings, too. Nicky, in my year, she has half siblings, and she just calls them siblings cause she says they’ve always grown up together like they were full siblings so why should they be halves of anything? My half siblings, it just feels like they know that I don’t really belong. Sometimes, I wish I could live full time with Dad and Pa and only see Mum and Greg and the kids on weekends. Like the opposite of what it’s like now.’

It’s not just sometimes. She’s been thinking that for a long time now, but this is the first time she’s told anyone.

‘Granddad and Grandmum split up when Mum and Uncle Jacob were little,’ Gemma informs her. ‘So they had it the same way, really, when they were kids. But there were two of them, so that makes it kind of different, doesn’t it?’

Meg nods. She supposes it does. And at the same time, somehow she knows in her heart that if Dad and Pa had a baby (and she knows that two guys can’t have a baby together, of course, though they could adopt or something), she’d feel a lot closer to that baby than she does to Tommy, Danny or Lottie. Because when Pa moved in, she and Dad made him a part of their family, and the three of them were a team, together. But when Mum married Greg, no one asked Meg, and Greg and Mum made their own family and Meg was more like an extra than a member of the team.

* * *

Meg is at Dad and Pa’s when she gets her first period. She knows what it is, of course. She’s twelve years old and her mum’s had The Talk with her, but it’s still entirely unexpected and she’s more than a little bit freaked out when she wakes up and her sheets are stained with blood.

Dad is completely helpless and even more freaked out than she is, but Pa, who grew up in a house with his mother and older sister, is cool as a cucumber. He sends Dad out to get towels, puts Meg in the shower and changes her sheets, flipping the mattress over and promising to get it cleaned before next Thursday. He asks her if he should ring Mum, or Nan, or Aunt Elinor or maybe Gemma, so she can talk to a woman about it, but once she’s clean, Meg feels calm, and perfectly safe and fine. She’s got her Pa to look after her and help her and support her, and she couldn’t be happier.

Mum isn’t happy when Meg finally tells her that she’d like to live with Dad and Pa during the week. It comes out during one of their rows. They’ve been having a lot of those lately, about school and chores and how Meg doesn’t want to go to church anymore, though she still wears the gold cross she got from her Nan for her first communion around her neck. First Mum is angry. Then she begins to cry, and Meg feels immediately guilty and hugs her.

‘Am I such a bad mother?’ Mum asks her between sobs.

‘No!’ Meg assures her. ‘You’re not a bad mother, you’re a great mother! Especially to Tommy and Danny and Lotts. And you’ve been a great mum to me too, it’s just that . . . You’re my family, Mum, you are. But Greg, and the kiddies . . . They’re not, really. And both Dad and Pa are. I want to live in a house where I belong properly. It’s not your fault, please don’t cry! I love you.’

In the end, she agrees. Dad sorts out the paperwork the next week, so he has main custody. Meg spends every Thursday and every other weekend at Mum and Greg’s. She plays with the kids, and she’s a good big sister. She’s pleased to find that she and Mum get along a lot better now than they did before she moved out, and she agrees to attend church the weekends she’s with them. Everyone seems much happier now.

* * *

Dad and Pa have rows sometimes. Mum and Greg do too, more frequently, really, but Dad and Pa’s rows are worse. They’re always insulting each other—that’s just what they’re like, and the older Meg gets, the less they try to shelter her from it—and she’s perfectly fine with that part of their relationship, but when they have rows, or words, as Dad tends to call it, Meg hides in her room, or, if it’s not too late, goes for a walk. Their rows often end with one of them storming out while the other tries to explain to her that it’s not as bad as it seems, and Dad/Pa will come back soon. And he always does, later that night, apologising first to her, and then to his husband, and they all kiss and hug and make up. Meg sometimes has rows with one or the other or both of them at once, too, because she’s a fourteen-year-old girl, and that’s what fourteen-year-old girls do, but that’s different.

The night when Dad storms out and doesn’t come back is the worst night of Meg’s life. She lies in her bed, waiting for the front door to open, waiting for whispers of forgiveness to seep in through the crack in her bedroom door, and it doesn’t happen. She can’t sleep, and at two in the morning she gets up and goes out into the darkened sitting room where she finds Pa in the sofa, knees drawn up to his chest, staring straight ahead. He looks small and lost and sad, and she sits next to him and puts her arms around him, and he cries. His sobs are silent, but he weeps into her hair, and it terrifies her because she’s never seen despair like that in her Pa, who’s always happy and strong and who’s always looked after her. Well, she thinks, now it’s my turn to look after him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers once he’s calmed down a bit. ‘I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t be acting like this. Fuck, what’s wrong with me?’ He doesn’t swear in front of her often, not if he thinks she can hear.

‘What happened?’ she asks in a small voice.

Pa shakes his head, sniffing and trying to wipe the tears from his cheeks with his sleeve. ‘It’s complicated, Half-pint,’ he says, forcing a smile (and that nickname is starting to feel dated, because Meg takes after her dad, and is only a couple of inches shorter than Pa by now). ‘Your dad . . . He’s not doing so well, pet. He’s not been doing so well for a while now.’

There’s a knot in Meg’s stomach and a lump in her throat, and she swallows hard. ‘Is he sick?’

‘No!’ Pa tells her hurriedly. ‘No, sweetie, no. Not . . . not physically. It’s just . . .’ He scratches his head and licks his lips and breathes a sigh of frustration. ‘Your dad and I, we’re both pretty damaged. We always were, we always had issues, and we make each other better. That’s why we’re together, that’s why we have to be together.’

‘Not because you love each other?’

Pa smiles. ‘That too. I love your dad. More than I generally tell him. We’ve never really been the kind to talk about our feelings or be open or what have you. We got better at that, too. I blame you for that, love.’ He pokes her shoulder playfully. ‘You’ve made us better. Hell, with us as role models it’s amazing you turned out this well at all.’

‘So, what’s wrong now?’ Meg asks.

He exhales and shakes his head. ‘Better doesn’t mean fixed. Your dad, he has all these problems and I’ve been trying to get him to get help. I shouldn’t be telling you all this, he’ll fucking—er, he’ll kill me.’

Meg smiles. ‘Pa, I’ve heard the word “fuck” before, you’re not shocking me.’

‘Yeah, just don’t say it around your mum, eh?’ He smiles a crooked smile back at her and ruffles her hair. ‘Point is, sometimes I push him too far. I’ve been trying to call him, he turned his mobile off.’ His voice is shaky. So are his hands, and he clutches the hem of his jumper to steady them. ‘Fuck, I just need him to come home!’

‘Yeah.’ Meg nods. ‘Me too. Don’t worry, he’ll come home soon.’

‘Shit, I should be the one comforting you, not the other way around,’ says Pa. He puts two strong arms around her and hugs her close. ‘What did we two old twats do to deserve a wonderful daughter like you, eh?’

‘I guess you’re just blessed,’ Meg says matter-of-factly.

‘We are,’ he agrees. ‘We are so blessed.’

Meg falls asleep in his arms. A couple of hours later, she wakes up when the front door opens and Dad walks in. Pa’s fallen asleep too, and stirs at the same time. For a moment, Dad just stands there and stares at them.

Then Meg gets to her feet, runs across the floor and fully intends to hug him, but instead she slaps him in the face. It’s like Patrick all over again. Now she’s shouting and swearing at him, telling him what a complete and utter bastard he is for walking out and being gone all fucking night and leaving them here to wonder where he’s gone, and if he’s all right. That he needs to sort out his shit, see a shrink or whatever it is he needs to do to get better and stop doing this to Pa, because can’t he see how much it’s hurting him? ‘You’re a selfish prick, and you need to calm the fuck down and do some fucking yoga or something, because right now you’re just acting like a complete and utter cunt!’

It gets very, very quiet, and Meg realises what she’s just said and covers her mouth with both hands, eyes going wide. Then Pa clears his throat and says, ‘Er, yeah. What Meg said.’

Dad starts to laugh. Then his laughter turns into sobs, and he pulls Meg to him and hugs her tightly. ‘I love you, sweetheart,’ he whispers. ‘And I’m so sorry.’ He loosens his grip on her enough to reach out one arm towards Pa in the couch. ‘Jacob . . . Love, I’m sorry. I’ll . . . I’ll get help, I promise. Just, please, come here?’

He does, and they all hug, and Dad and Pa kiss, and there are tears and ‘I love you’s, and then it seems like everything is all right.

And it’s not, of course it isn’t. Meg knows that. But it will be.

It’s four in the morning now, and Meg is so tired she can barely stand. Dad and Pa both see her to bed. They both tuck her in, even though she’s fourteen and much too old for that sort of thing, and they both kiss her on the forehead and tell her good night. And as they pull the door almost shut, just the way she likes it, she hears Dad say, ‘Jacob, I’m so sorry. I love you so fucking much!’

And Pa replies, ‘Yeah, I know, you old cunt. I know. I love you too. We’ll talk about it in the morning, okay?’

And she knows, Meg knows, that everything is going to be just fine. Because Dad and Pa love each other, and they love her, and she loves them, and that’s all that matters. Because they’re a family.