Her hands balled into fists. ‘You know why. So you could get to know Sóley.’
‘Except you don’t want me to get to know her.’ He shook his head, his blue eyes hard and uncompromising. ‘What exactly is it you want from me? You gave me such a hard time for even suggesting that I help you financially, but every time I so much as offer to hold my daughter you can’t get away from me fast enough. Look at tonight,’ he carried on remorselessly, ‘I wanted to help and you kept pushing me away.’
Her heart was pounding. He was right. She had pushed him away, and from his perspective it probably didn’t make sense. But why did she have to see anything from his point of view? It wasn’t as though her needs were high on his agenda.
She took a deep breath. ‘Do you think that was the first time she’s been like that?’
‘No, of course not. And I’m not questioning your parenting skills. I know you can cope, but I don’t know why you think you need to cope alone.’
She felt a buzzing in her ears. Out of any question he could have asked, it was the one that hurt the most. How could she explain to this cool-eyed stranger who didn’t need anyone how she felt?
Her daughter’s birth had made her feel whole and necessary. It had taken the sting out of her father’s rejection and eased her ever-present sense of being ‘other’ to her mother and brother’s dark-eyed autonomy.
And then she had seen Ragnar on television and, prompted by guilt and a desire to do the right thing, she had got in touch. Maybe it had been the right thing to do, but it felt like a mistake—only it had taken until tonight for her to see how big a mistake.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Her throat tightened and she pushed back her chair. Her voice was shaking...her hands too. She wanted to leave, to crawl somewhere quiet and dark and hide from the terrible ache of loneliness that was swallowing her whole.
‘It does to me.’
He was standing too now, but that wasn’t what made her hesitate. It was the sudden fierceness of his words, as though they had been dragged out of him against his will.
‘I have to go,’ she said.
She felt his hand brush against hers.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘It’s nothing.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m just tired.’
‘Tired of what?’
The gentleness of his voice as much as his question itself surprised her. ‘I don’t know,’ she lied, lowering her face.
She couldn’t tell him the truth. How could she explain the convoluted, chaotic journey that had brought her here, to this kitchen, to this man who lived his life by numbers?
But if she’d thought her silence would answer his question she’d been wrong. Glancing up, she saw that he was waiting, willing to wait for however long it took, and the fact that he was prepared to do that for her seemed to ease the tightness in her throat.
‘It’s stupid really...and unfair.’
‘What is?’ he said softly.
‘It’s not their fault. It’s not my mum and Lucas’s fault that I feel like an outsider when they’re together.’
He studied her face. ‘I thought you were close to them?’
‘I am.’ Her mouth trembled. ‘I love them, and they love me, but we’re so different.’ She frowned. ‘I know it sounds ridiculous, and I’m not expecting you to understand, but it feels like even though they’re my family I don’t fit in.’
For a moment he didn’t reply, and then his eyes met hers. ‘No, I do understand.’
She took a breath. ‘I thought for a long time that I must be like my dad. My mum never told him she was pregnant with me, and I was convinced that if I met him there would be this moment of recognition, this connection between us.’
Her voice faltered, the memory of that stilted meeting catching her unawares, the feeling of failure and disappointment undimmed by time.
‘But it didn’t?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘It was too late. There was nothing there. We were like damp firewood.’ Clenching her hands, she forced her mouth into a stiff smile. ‘That’s why I wanted you to meet Sóley now, when you still had room for her.’