Clara and the Unseen Father
Clara never hated her stepfather, but she certainly didn’t like him. How could he be a father? She had never known one, and this quiet, awkward man named Freddy, with his “I ate a bear” jokes during tea time, wasn’t much better. Yet, for her mother’s sake, Clara kept her resentment tucked under her newsboy cap from the start.
At eleven, she understood why Mum clung to the idea of a family, of someone tending the garden and baking scones on Sundays. Freddy was decent in a mumbled, half-occupied way, but he was just that—Freddy. He didn’t notice Clara’s scraped knees or the way she traced her mother’s name in frost on the kitchen window. Unlike Daisy’s dad, who could be found slumped behind the bar by midday, he never reached for the gin.
Freddy didn’t grapple with Clara’s presence any more than he did the loose rooves in the attic. He accepted her like a new coat—practical, not personal—and set about planning a life with Claire, praying the old church bells would ring again when his wife gave birth to his real son, or perhaps two.
They tied the knot at the registry office, swapped two cramped terraced houses for a bungalow, and Clara gained a bedroom of her own. Yet the truce between them was brittle, like Peggy’s best china. After school, Clara dove into her books, avoiding the man who filled the kettle and left it on the table, never asking if she preferred tea or coffee.
When Claire’s mornings turned sour and her head pounded, the family rejoiced—pregnancy! Clara dreamt of a brother, Freddy of a son. But the news brought not life but a cruel twist: a tumour, aggressive and unrelenting, left Clara an orphan at eleven, her path leading toward a local council home.
She hadn’t yet made sense of her grief when she overheard Peggy, Daisy’s drunken aunt, weeping in the kitchen. “I’d take her, as much as I’d take a stray pup,” Peggy slurred. “But with Daisy running off to pubs every night, I’m not built for two lost souls. Besides, we’re the last of our lot.”
Clara never meant to eavesdrop. But she knew enough: the council was coming, Freddy had stalled them, and he had asked for more time to find family.
The next morning, Freddy, hunched like an old grandfather clock, broached the subject. Clara, clutching her wooly scarf, already guessed. “You’ll go to the home, luv,” he mumbled.
“I know,” she whispered.
“Not about that. I could be your legal guardian. The council says it’s possible… if you want it.” His voice cracked. “I’m no good with children, but I can’t let them take you. *Can’t.* Please. For Claire’s sake. Try, aye?”
Clara had never seen Freddy cry. Not at the funeral, not when Claire’s last sketches lay scattered on the easel. She stepped closer, pressed her forehead to his, and for once, he didn’t pull away.
Their days settled into a careful rhythm. Freddy learned to boil an egg without burning it, Clara mastered the art of polite nods. He bought her a peppermint ice cream during the blackout strikes; she set aside savings to surprise him with a ticket to see *The Phantom of the Opera* at the West End.
Linda, Freddy’s new wife, arrived like a puff of wind from her council flat, her voice too sharp for their quiet home. Daisy came over to sleep, leaving fairy lights on the windowsill, and slowly, the ache lessened. Freddy attended parent-teacher days, stashed a third of his wages in envelopes marked “Clara’s College Fund,” and never pricked her about what she spent.
But Clara never called him *daddy*. Not in his face, not when he wasn’t listening. For Freddy, she remained an accidental daughter, stitched into his world by duty, not blood—a truth some neighbours whispered after a few rounds of sherry at the pub.
At fourteen, Freddy brought news like a tempest on the horizon. A new woman. A new child. He asked, tentatively, if they could all live under the same roof.
Linda, a woman with a laugh like broken china, soon claimed the space as her own. Freddy’s joy at the new baby, little Stanley, dimmed as her prejudices took root. Clara, no longer a child but not quite a woman, kept to the periphery, wondering if her absence might ease the friction.
When Stanley arrived, Freddy began to notice. Linda’s sneers, the way she crumpled Clara’s homework, the implication that she was a burden, not a daughter. “We’re not her family, Freddy,” Linda chided. “They’ll take *him*, not us. There’s no loyalty in orphans.”
Clara never aired their disputes. She wasn’t the one to start a row when Freddy’s eyes softened as Stanley squirmed over his old Converse.
On weekends, they tended Claire’s grave, planted tulips by the headstone. “It’s all right, love,” Freddy would say, brushing the dirt from the photograph. “I’ve got you. That’s enough.”
But Linda, unyielding, tightened her grip. No more visits from Daisy. Clara’s bank account, once a shared ledger of bus tokens and library fines, became a locked folder. She hid her hunger during school breaks, swallowing salted crisps in the lavatory.
It was the headmistress who tugged Freddy aside, her voice trembling. “Clara’s skin is paper-thin, sir. They’ll write it off as *voluntary fasting* if she faints again. *Please.* Talk to her.”
When the truth hit him—about the money, the silence, the girl who’d been texted “Sorry luv, out of violets” during a blackout—he cursed in a way Clara had never heard. “You should’ve shouted,” he growled. “I’d have *fought* for more.”
He gave her a debit card, her name in gold on the plastic. “This is for you,” he said. “University. A proper wedding. Even if you don’t want me underfoot, you’ll have a roof.”
Linda hissed as the funds dwindled, demanding “contributions” from their savings. “You can’t spend on that *animal*,” she’d hiss. But Freddy, once so timid, became a wall. Clara, no longer a shadow, learned to stand beside him.
Daisy, now married to a man two cities away, phoned nightly, a lifeline between their fractured homes. The dream of shared flat and secret marshmallows in the attic seemed further off than ever, until inheritance from Freddy’s late aunt offered a key. A modest flat in Lincoln, his hometown. An art college with bursaries.
Clara left with a suitcase and a lump in her throat. Freddy, in his battered flat cap, walked her to the station, then stood on the platform until the steam blotted him out.
Years later, at her wedding to a lanky librarian who’d recited Keats in her tute, Clara danced with her father. The floorboards creaked with the weight of old arguments and new forgiveness.
As the crowd clapped and the photog graphed their wobbling steps, Clara whispered, “*Thank you,* Daddy. Even when you didn’t think I was yours, you choose*d* to be.”
And in that moment, beneath the fairy lights and the scent of English roses, she understood: family isn’t flesh and blood. It’s the man who gives you his last shilling and calls it a fortune.
