Page 128 of The Sunrise Sisterhood

‘But what about Mum and Dad’s wedding?’ Clare asked.

This time, Mike did look sheepish. ‘I got cold feet.’

‘I found him in the loo, crying like a baby,’ Liz supplied. ‘I threatened to come after him with my meat tenderiser and mash up his manhood.’

‘Now that I do remember. I loved Jen very much.’ Mike looked at Clare. ‘I didn’t think I was good enough for her.’

‘You weren’t.’ She stared back at her father mutinously. ‘Watching what you put Mum through nearly broke her, and me.’

‘I’m not proud of the way the marriage ended,’ he said, meeting her eye. ‘But I don’t regret you, or you, Skye, for a single moment.’

‘My birthday weekend in London,’ Skye said quietly. ‘I’d been looking forward to that for weeks. You and Mum were arguing so much at the time, I hoped that doing something fun together would bring us closer as a family. You even came up to London with us. And then the next minute, you vanished in a puff of smoke.’

‘You lied to all of us,’ Clare agreed. ‘Except Liz apparently.’

Liz clasped her hands in front of her and stayed silent.

Mike twisted the gold ring on the little finger of his right hand. Clare had a vivid memory of sitting on his lap twisting that ring while he was watching something boring on TV. It had belonged to her grandfather.

‘My dad, your Grandad Tom, died when you were small, Clare. Skye, you never knew him at all. He was only fifty-eight. His dad, your great-grandfather, died even younger, he didn’t reach fifty. I come from a line of men who die young. For the last ten years, I’ve felt like I’m living on borrowed time, expecting to get ill, panicking whenever I get heartburn in case it’s really a heart attack.’

A spark of comprehension lit up inside Clare; she’d known this about her grandfather and great-grandfather but had never given it much thought.

‘The month before that weekend, I found a lump,’ said Mike quietly. ‘In my testicle. And I freaked out. Thought this is it. My time was up. Just like Dad and Grandad, I’d never make it to old age.’

‘I didn’t know that, did you?’ Clare looked at Skye, who shook her head.

‘No one knew,’ said Mike. ‘I’d fast-forwarded my brain to the worst-case scenario, and I didn’t want anyone to see how scared I was. I paid to go to a private hospital in London for tests. When the results came back, I couldn’t even bring myself to open the envelope.’

‘He called me, and I opened it with him,’ said Liz.

Skye’s eyes were still shiny with unshed tears. ‘Not Mum. That’s so sad.’

‘Was it cancer?’ Clare’s heart was in her mouth. As much as she was angry with him now, she didn’t want to lose him. She wanted honesty from him, that was all.

He nodded. ‘It had been caught early, but they wanted to perform surgery as soon as possible.’

‘I did offer the use of my meat tenderiser again,’ Liz said, risking a smile.

Mike smirked at her and, for a second, Clare saw them both as old mates from uni who’d grown up with each other, been there for the good, the bad and the downright ugly.

‘The surgery was the weekend of my birthday and Clare’s graduation,’ Skye realised.

‘Your mum had already got tickets to a show, and you were so excited,’ he said. ‘I knew if I warned Frankie that I couldn’t go before the day, she would cancel and rearrange. I didn’t want to do that to you. I knew the two of you would still have fun without me.’ He turned to Clare. ‘There was so much going on at the time that I did get the date of your graduation wrong. It was in my diary for the following week. It wasn’t until Jen called me the night before to arrange lunch for the three of us in Bath before the ceremony that the penny dropped. I cocked up, love, and I’m sorry.’

‘Mike needed someone to be with him after surgery because of the anaesthetic,’ said Liz. ‘He asked me to go with him, so I did.’

‘I’m glad he had you to turn to,’ said Clare grudgingly. ‘Although I’m still annoyed by the secrecy and lies.’

‘And I’m still annoyed about Harriet,’ said Skye, sitting back in her chair. ‘Bloody hell, Dad, she’s young enough to be your granddaughter.’

‘Which is ridiculous, given the way you behave to your actual granddaughter,’ Clare added.

‘I feel like I’m being attacked by my own children.’ Mike squirmed and looked pleadingly at Liz.

‘Don’t look at me for protection,’ she huffed. ‘You’re a serial adulterer with an embarrassing habit of trying to make yourself look and sound younger than you are.’

‘Thanks a bunch.’