Read Things I Want My Daughters to Know for Free Online

little, so that his two steps forward ended up feeling like three steps back.
    So long as he didn’t push, things were good. Things were really great. He worried that he was fooling himself. Setting himself up for a fall. What he couldn’t figure out—the sixty-four-million-dollar question that kept him awake at night—was whether she was holding back because of him, or because of her.
    And even if he knew the answer, he would keep on doing this. Because, the thing was, he loved her. He couldn’t walk away if he wanted to.
    So when she said she wanted to do this whole funeral thing alone, he went along with it, and let her do it alone. And when her voice broke on the mobile, he dropped everything and went to her. And when he parked and climbed out—the car door sounding incredibly loud in the dark silence—and caught the twitch of the curtains in the bedroom with the light still on, waited for her to open the door, and picked her up, clutching her tightly and silently to him, he knew that it had all been the right thing to do. For both of them.
    Hannah
    Hannah was too sleepy the night of the funeral to read her letter. She was still enough of a child that even burying her mother couldn’t interrupt the rhythm of her needs. She still felt hungry and she still felt tired, even when everyone around her had lost their appetite and wandered around with the wide staring eyes of the exhausted sleepless. The next morning, when she woke up, a warm, unfamiliar presence was beside her in bed, and she sat up, confused. For just a second, she thought it was her mum. When she was younger, and sick, Barbara had sometimes slept T h i n g s I W a n t M y D a u g h t e r s t o K n o w 29
    with her. She remembered nights of coughing and snuffling against her mum’s chest, the aroma of Vicks VapoRub wafting from both of them, feeling arms around her and hearing gentle words. “There, there. Mummy’s got you. Mummy’s got you.” It wasn’t her mum, of course. She hadn’t done that for years, and she would never do it again. It was Amanda, curled with her smooth brown back to her, hair spread wildly across the pillow. She didn’t mind. She quite liked it. It made her feel like she’d had something important to do, even if she hadn’t known she was doing it. Amanda must have been lonely, or sad. Hannah lay back down and tried to fall asleep again, but she couldn’t. The letter was the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes again, lying propped against her alarm clock.
    My Hannah,
    This is probably hardest for you. I’ve gone far too soon for you, haven’t I? There is still—however much you deny it!—growing up to do, and I’m going to miss it. You know, in all of this, that is the only thing that makes me mad. It makes me so fucking angry that I . . . well, that I want to write fucking in a letter to my daughter, who isn’t allowed to say the word. Don’t be cross with me, sweetheart. It isn’t my choice.
    You were my magical gift. That I should have been able to conceive you, carry you, and give birth to you at forty-five, when I thought that part of my life was over, was a miracle to me. The funny thing was that I never realized you were missing from my family until they put you on my stomach and I looked into your face for the first time. You were red, and angry, and you had that amazing spiky hair sticking out all over your precious head, and I knew straightaway that you’d always been meant to come. You were a present from your wonderful father, and proof of our love for each 30 e l i z a b e t h
    n o b l e
    other. (Doubtless a gross thought right now, but if you keep the letter and read it again in a few years, you won’t think so. . . .) You are turning into a confident, beautiful, accomplished, wonderful young woman, Hannah. I have to believe that you and I squeezed more than fifteen years into our time together, and I want you to know that I have faith in your ability to carry on and to thrive and to be