How I came to be in England – Part 22

This weekend was supposed to be the hottest of the summer so far and, by the looks of it, the sun was already high up in the sky. I climbed out of bed and opened the door.

I thought for a moment, then nodded to him and closed the door. ‘Don’t forget your swimming trunks or whatever you women wear,’ he shouted through the door.

Without wondering too much about his good humour, or the strange desire to include me in the first outing of his latest purchase, I got ready and was soon on board the legendary ‘Paula’ as he’d christened his speed boat. The girlfriend and I sat at the rear while my Father, proudly wearing a blue seaman’s cap, steered the thing at high speed under the bridges on the Western shore of Helsinki. He was behaving like a child with a new toy, veering it this way and that, making us scream as he accelerated and made the boat bounce on the surface of the sea.

The girlfriend had made a picnic. ‘Did you have a nice time in Aulanko,’ she asked when we sat around a checked tablecloth she’d placed on the ground. I didn’t know what to say, but instead looked down at the food: a plateful of my father’s Gravad Lax, a packet of thinly sliced smoked ham, a loaf of rye bread, butter, salted gherkins. She handed me a paper plate and my Father picked up slices of ham with his fingers and stuffed them into his mouth. ‘Don’t talk about that Englishman,’ he mumbled to the girlfriend.

She stared at him, the sea breeze making her messy hair blow over the dark brown eyes. ‘I just wondered, because the weather…’

‘She doesn’t want to talk about it – can’t you see that?’ my Father barked.

Here we go, I thought and lay down shutting my eyes. The deserted cliff, which my Father had finally settled on, was warm against my bare back. I was so tired. I hadn’t slept through one night since the phone call from the Englishman.

‘Give her a Lonkero,’ I heard my Father say. The girlfriend handed me a cold bottle of the gin and bitter lemon drink. I smiled. I felt sorry for her. She had no idea what she was taking on with my Father. And I felt a pang of guilt – should I warn her about his drinking and his moods? Should I tell her that he’d hit my Mother? But all men were pigs. She was old; surely she would’ve worked that out herself by now?

As I lay in the warm sunshine, I wondered how it was that I’d let myself be completely steered by men. First by my Father, then by my fiancé and now by the Englishman. Wasn’t it high time I took decisions on my own life without considering a man?