When Love Hits Zero

When I realised my lawyer husband couldn’t let go of his first love, a divorcée with a little boy, I started teaching our daughter to call him “Daniel”.

When our daughter ran a fever, one late-night call from his first love was enough to send him out the door. I stroked her burning forehead and taught her to say, “Bye, Daniel.”

He had promised to come to her school’s Father’s Day assembly. Then his first love rang in tears, saying her son had no dad to go with him, and he was gone, just like that.

I didn’t even look up. I handed my phone to my daughter and let her tell the class parents’ WhatsApp group that “Daniel” couldn’t make it.

Every time, she hesitated for a long while.

Eventually, my husband realised how much he owed us.

He suggested, all on his own, that we have a family portrait done.

But right outside the photography studio, his first love rang again, sobbing:

“Daniel, could you come to Toby’s nursery right now? It’s the parents’ sports day, and every other kid has a dad running with them. Toby’s the only one who doesn’t…”

A flicker of pity crossed my husband’s face. He was about to crouch down and explain to our daughter.

This time, she didn’t need me to remind her. She gave him a little wave.

“It’s okay, Daniel. Go and be with your other child. Me and Mummy are enough for the family photo.”

 ——

Chapter 1

The moment she said it, Daniel Ashford and I both froze.

It had been twenty-eight days since I realised his heart had long since left this family. And for twenty-eight days, every time he abandoned the two of us for Vanessa Hale, I had our daughter call him “Daniel”.

The way you’d talk to a friend’s dad. A grown-up who had nothing to do with you.

I wanted that name to remind me, and to remind her: stop breaking your heart over someone who isn’t worth it.

But my daughter didn’t see it that way.

She was only seven, the age when a little girl clings to her daddy most.

Every time I asked her to say it, she would hesitate for ages before whispering it: “Daniel.”

But today, she had said it all by herself.

Seeing us both frozen, she took my hand and said to Daniel:

“Daniel, you go on. You’re busy.”

Then she looked up at me.

“Mummy, let’s go in. We’ll miss our booking.”

She led me, step by step, towards the studio.

Daniel had suggested the family portrait himself, to make up for missing her Father’s Day assembly.

She had been looking forward to it for a whole fortnight.

I followed her stiffly, a stone pressing on my chest, so heavy I wanted to cry.

I had found out about Daniel by accident.

One day he went to Vanessa’s son’s birthday party, and when he came home he forgot to empty his coat pocket.

Inside was the receipt for a family ticket for three to the London Children’s Comic Expo.

A month earlier, for her seventh birthday, our daughter’s wish had been for the three of us to go to this year’s Children’s Comic Expo. It was being held at the ExCeL centre in East London, running from late May right through to early September. Her favourite cartoon, Lulu the Little Fox, was holding a character meet-and-greet there.

Daniel said it sounded boring and turned her down without a second thought.

A few days later, he took Vanessa’s son instead.

On his phone, I found Vanessa’s Instagram.

[The most magical expo deserves the best dad in the world.]

The photo showed Daniel and Vanessa holding the little boy between them.

Vanessa was his first love. Divorced, with a child.

That night we had the worst row of our entire marriage.

I insisted on taking our daughter and getting a divorce.

Daniel said I was being unreasonable.

He asked how I could bear to leave our child without a father.

He swore that all he felt for Vanessa was sympathy, nothing romantic at all.

Looking at my daughter’s frightened little white face, I was torn.

I knew that if I took her away by force, she would spend her whole life missing this father.

But I knew even better that once it happened, it would happen a second time, and a third.

I wasn’t going to let my child be hurt again and again for the sake of his so-called sympathy.

So I tried something else.

The next morning, I slipped a separation agreement my solicitor had drafted into a stack of papers and handed it to him, saying it was enrolment paperwork for her new school year that needed a parent’s signature.

He signed it while on the phone to Vanessa.

A partner at a law firm, a man who made his living reading contracts word by word, signed his own separation agreement without so much as a glance.

Then I gave myself, and him, thirty last days.

If, in those thirty days, Daniel came back to us, then for our daughter’s sake I would lock that agreement in a drawer and carry on as if none of this had ever happened.

If he didn’t, I would use those thirty days to wean her off him, to desensitise her, a little at a time.

Today was day twenty-eight.

And she had called him “Daniel” without being told.

I could feel her small body trembling.

I wasn’t the least bit happy. It felt like a thousand needles in my heart.

As we crossed the road, Daniel finally came to his senses.

He took a few steps after us, wanting to ask her what that was about, but Vanessa’s call came through again, the same simpering, tearful voice:

“Daniel, where are you? The parents’ race is about to start, and Toby won’t stop crying. He wants his daddy, and I can’t calm him down.”

Daniel stopped, staring at our backs, phone to his ear, and said:

“Okay, I know. I’m on my way.”

He hung up, sent me a text that said “We’ll talk tonight”, and turned and walked away without looking back.

The engine roared into life, then faded into the distance.

My daughter stopped walking and threw herself into my arms, her tears soaking the front of my top.

“Mummy.”

“Can we not have a daddy any more?”