by Imogen Clark
‘Told her what, exactly?’ interrupted Hector impatiently. ‘Who is this woman, Mother?’
I watched as Grace looked at her son and then back to me. I could see the anguish in her face, as if she was struggling with a demon that we couldn’t see. Then she put her hand to her mouth. The diamond in her engagement ring was huge and it glinted in the sunlight. She took a deep breath.
‘Hector, darling,’ she said, ‘this is Leah. She is your half-sister.’
What? Had I misheard her? Half-sister? My brain was tumbling now, with nothing to grasp as it fell. I had no clue what was going on. And neither, apparently, did Hector.
‘What?’ he said, managing to infuse as much confusion as I was feeling into that single word, but also charging it with something else. Horror? Disdain? I wasn’t sure. His eyes ran up and down me so that I suddenly felt like I was standing there naked. I could see him taking in every detail of me, his lip curling slightly as he did it. I drew myself up as straight as I could manage and glowered at him. I wasn’t having him judging me. I didn’t care who he thought he was.
‘Just as I said,’ Grace said in a voice that was slow and deliberate, as if Hector was a half-wit. ‘Leah is your father’s daughter.’
This just kept getting worse. How could Dad have been his dad too? It made no sense. I tried to make my brain stop panicking and think more clearly. If Hector was my half-brother, that meant that Clio was, what, my half-sister? We were sisters?
But how? All the possibilities crashed into one another as they jostled for position. Was Dad married to Grace before he married Mum? Was that it? But if that was right how come they’d never told me, especially if I had half-siblings? There was no shame in being divorced. The parents of almost everyone I knew had divorced and remarried. Why wouldn’t Mum and Dad have mentioned it?
Then it hit me. Clio was almost exactly the same age as me. We’d laughed at the coincidence of it all. But if we shared a father, then that could only mean one thing, surely? Dad must have been sleeping with Mum and Grace at the same time.
I could see on Grace’s face the moment when she realised that I had worked out the truth. Dad had been having an affair with Grace whilst he was married to Mum.
But no, that wasn’t it. There was something more. Grace looked as if her entire world had just collapsed in on itself, as if just standing there was as much as she could manage. An affair was crappy but it didn’t merit such an extreme response, especially not over thirty years later.
Hector, who had stalked away to think through what he had just learnt, now strode back to us.
‘So, Dad was married before?’ he asked. His mind was clearly following the same path as mine, and I could see him scrutinising me, searching for clues to my age. His eyes flitted to Poppy and Noah as if they could be the solution to the conundrum, but when he looked back at me confusion was still etched across his face. He looked so much like Dad, I could see that now. Except that I rarely saw Dad when he wasn’t smiling or laughing at some joke or other. Hector’s face seemed set in a perpetual scowl.
Grace shook her head sadly.
‘Then he was having an affair?’ asked Hector, his tone slightly softer now. ‘Was Dad having an affair? Is that it? Why did you never say? How long have you known? Oh, Mother.’
For God’s sake! Did he really call his mum ‘Mother’? What an idiot he was! How could Clio and Mrs Newman or Grace or whatever she was called, how could they be so lovely and this man, my so-called half-brother, be such a moron?
‘I’m afraid,’ said Grace quietly, ‘that that’s not quite it.’ She turned to where Clio was standing with Noah. ‘Clio!’ she shouted.
Clio looked up from her examination of Noah’s patterns.
‘Could you come here just for a moment, please?’
‘I’ll be right back,’ Clio said to Noah, tapping him gently on his head as she returned to the group. Poppy hung back with Noah.
‘There is something that I have to tell all three of you,’ Grace said.
I glanced at Clio but she just shook her head. Whatever it was, she didn’t know either. Or wasn’t saying.
‘I’m afraid that this is going to come as something of a shock to you all,’ Grace began. She took a deep breath, girding herself for what she was about to reveal. My heart was banging in my chest so hard that I could hear it in my ears. Clio put her hand to her mouth, her eyes very wide. Hector remained stony-faced.
‘There is no easy way to tell you this,’ Grace continued, ‘but my husband Charles was the same man as your father Ray, Leah.’
I opened my mouth to say something, although I had no idea what, but Grace put up her hand to silence me.
‘And,’ she continued, her voice trembling slightly now, ‘he was married to both me and your mother Melissa at the same time.’
I’d heard the words, but I didn’t know what to do with them. Married to them both at once? How could that be? It was illegal, for a start. I couldn’t even begin to work out how that might impact on me. It almost felt as if I had suddenly ceased to exist, even though I knew that was ridiculous.
I stared at Grace as my brain processed her words, but it was like thinking through treacle. Hector also appeared to be struggling with the revelation. His mouth hung open as if the elastic holding his jaw together had snapped. Only Clio didn’t look entirely horrified.
‘Did you know?’ I asked her.
What would it mean if she had done? Where would that leave our friendship? I could feel something close to betrayal building inside me, but Clio shook her head.
‘That Dad was a . . .’
She hesitated over voicing the word, but we all knew what she was trying to say. Bigamist. An ugly word for an ugly crime, I thought.
‘. . . was married to them both at the same time? No. But I had worked some of it out,’ she admitted.
Grace looked horrified. ‘Clio, no!’ she said, as if this was the worst news she could possibly receive. ‘How?’
‘There was a notebook with his things when he died. A nurse gave it to me at the hospital. It had names and dates in it.’ Then she turned and looked directly at me. ‘And the address of the house . . .’
She left her sentence unfinished, but I understood exactly what she was trying to tell me. Clio had known that we were sisters all along. I felt sick, physically sick, as if someone had just taken a baseball bat to my stomach.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a voice so tiny that if I hadn’t seen her lips move I wouldn’t have heard. ‘I was going to tell you, but then when we got so close I was scared in case it spoiled everything. And I wasn’t sure, not at first. But then, when you were telling me about your dad . . . Well, you could have been talking about mine. And that story about trapping his finger in the cupboard. That was Dad all over. I could just imagine it happening exactly as you told me. You know that he played the violin? That was his job – with us, that is.’
I shook my head. This wasn’t right. How could my dad have played the violin professionally and me not even know that he was musical? I was starting to feel woozy with it all.
But then it was Hector’s turn to look confused. He snapped his head round to speak to Clio. ‘But how do you know her?’ he asked, pointing a finger at me. He leant on the word ‘her’ as if I was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
Clio smiled at me and then she slipped her arm quietly round my waist and pulled me in closer to her. Her citrusy perfume smelt fresh and clean.
‘Leah? She has a name, Hector. Well, I came to the house when Dad died. Like you, I remembered that day trip and when I found the address in Dad’s notebook, I just knocked on the door and asked if I could have a look round for old times’ sake. Leah let me in and was kind to me and we just went from there. She is the nicest, funniest, most thoughtful friend I have ever had and I couldn’t be prouder or more delighted that she is also my sister.’
The beginnings of an anger that had been building inside me just evaporated as I realised that I f
elt exactly the same way about Clio. I wasn’t sure I understood why she hadn’t told me what she knew, but it didn’t make one iota of difference to our relationship. In fact, us being sisters was just the cherry on the cake. I grinned at Clio and was pleased to see the relief that flooded her face as she realised that I’d forgiven her.
This was all starting to feel a bit like the end of an Agatha Christie novel as I slowly slotted the pieces into place. Did it mean that Dad was dead, then? I supposed that it must do. He’d been as good as dead to me for years anyway, but it was still a shock to think of it. I couldn’t deal with that part just yet, but I didn’t have to, because Clio hadn’t finished.
‘But how do you know Leah, Mum?’ she asked.
Grace looked so desperately sad that I thought she might disintegrate to powder there in front of our eyes.
‘That was through the house, too,’ she said softly. ‘The bank rang asking about the deeds when Charles first bought it back in the eighties. Your father told me that he’d bought it for his half-brother, so one day I came to see it for myself. I met your mother, Leah. She was a lovely woman, so open and friendly. She invited me in and we had such a nice chat. I didn’t know then that her Ray and my Charles were the same person. I just believed what Charles had told me. I mean, why wouldn’t I?’
Grace looked around the three of us for some reassurance, but none of us responded, so she continued. ‘Then one day when I came to see Melissa, I saw Charles in the house with her. I thought to start with that they were having an affair, and eventually I decided that Charles had cooked up the story about Ray just to put me off the scent. I only found out years later that he was actually married to us both.’
‘I can’t do this,’ Hector announced suddenly, turning on his heel and striding off in the direction of the house. ‘I refuse to have anything to do with it. It’s complete crap. I’m going back to the Hall. Mother, Clio. Let’s go.’
For a moment, Clio looked as though she was going to object to being ordered around like that, but then Grace shook her head at her and she seemed to change her mind.
‘I’m so sorry, Leah,’ said Grace. ‘I’m sure we’ll be in touch very soon. And please don’t worry about the house. There is no way that I will allow you to be turned out on to the street.’
She gave me a smile, and in it I could see some of the strength that must have allowed her to carry Dad’s terrible secret by herself for all those years. I smiled back, and I hoped she could see that I didn’t blame her for any of it. At least, I hoped I didn’t. My mind was in such a mess that I couldn’t be sure of what I thought.
Grace turned to leave, following her son to the beach steps. Clio lingered a moment longer, but then Hector bellowed at her across the sand and she scampered after him like a little girl.
‘I’ll ring you,’ she mouthed at me as she ran, her hand to her ear like a telephone receiver.
I felt completely numb. I couldn’t even begin to take in what had just happened. I watched the sorry little band as they trailed across the sand to the steps, up and away.
‘Mummy,’ said Noah, suddenly out of nowhere standing at my side, ‘the sea’s washed away my patterns. Shall we go home now?’
55
LEAH – NOW
I sat in the house, the house that my father had bought for my mother but which, in fact, had never been transferred to her and was now owned by, who? Grace? Hector? Clio? Not me, that was for sure.
There were so many elements to this mess that I didn’t know which bit to think about first. Could Dad really have been married to two women at once? Ludicrous though it seemed, I had to assume that that part was true. It was hardly the kind of story that Grace would make up.
And it would explain a lot. Dad’s constant absences, the excuses, all the fuss he made of me when he was at home. What was that all about? Guilt? I felt stung by the cliché of it all. He could just have lavished me with expensive gifts and been done with it. It wasn’t like he was short of cash, which was ironic given how Mum had shopped in Kwik Save and stored up coupons.
And what about Mum? Did she know? I couldn’t believe that she did. She’d never have taken something like that lying down. Surely, if she’d found out about Dad and Grace, she’d have fought for him. Wouldn’t she have stormed round to Hartsford Hall and dragged him away home?
Then again . . . I thought about their final row, the one that I’d missed but which the neighbours had talked about afterwards in hushed tones. I’d never known what it had been about, just that it was bad enough for Dad to up and leave us. And that had been what had led to Mum’s suicide, or so I’d always thought.
But this new information cast a different light on it all. What if Mum had decided that she couldn’t go on living, not simply because Dad had left us, but because of what he had done to her? I tried to imagine the hurt, the shame, the humiliation of discovering that the man you thought you were married to was actually a figment of someone’s imagination, a fraud, fake. Ray Allen did not exist and as a consequence neither did Melissa Allen. Maybe Mum, rather than having to live with the ugly truth of that situation, had decided that Melissa Allen had to disappear too, and she’d achieved that in the most effective way she could think of.
Poor Mum, going through all that on her own and protecting me from the shame completely. Actually, though, I couldn’t help thinking that Mum had made the wrong call there. How much better would it have been for me if she had just sucked it up and got on with life without Dad? Better for me, maybe, but obviously unimaginably painful for her.
And Clio. What about my new best friend Clio? Did the fact that we were sisters make any difference? Was the privileged life that Clio was living something that I should by rights have had? No. That was a ridiculous thought, and anyway, hadn’t Clio once told me that the Hall and all the money came from Grace’s side of the family? It was nothing to do with Dad. And also, for all the money and the silver spoon, Clio had been a shell of a woman when I first met her. She was only just starting to come alive now, now that she was escaping from the gravitational pull of all that wealth.
I realised that I actually felt sorry for poor Clio. She’d worked most of it out already and just kept the truth hidden inside herself to protect the rest of us, just like Grace had done. What would she have done if Dad’s secret hadn’t come out the way it had? Would she have continued to carry the burden shouldered by Grace for so long – a legacy passed from mother to daughter to protect herself and Hector?
Well, that was a joke. Hector didn’t need any protecting. I didn’t want anything to do with my new brother, and he had made it obvious that he felt the same about me, so that was easy. Except that he now appeared to hold the key to our entire life in his hands. Grace had said that we wouldn’t be evicted, but I very much doubted that Hector agreed with her. I was going to have to find a way to deal with him if only to keep a roof over our heads.
God, what a mess.
A text pinged and I snatched up my phone expecting it to be Clio, but it was Marlon. Despite everything my heart jumped when I saw his name.
Hi, it said. So are we still on for tonight?
I had completely forgotten our date but was delighted by the timing.
Yes! I quickly typed back. You have no idea how much I want to see you xxx
What the hell. If that made me sound too keen, then I didn’t care. I was keen, and I had just discovered that life was far too short to keep secrets.
56
GRACE – NOW
Hector had stopped shouting. He had been barking at them all for three whole months since Charles’s death and now suddenly his voice was gone, struck dumb by what he had learned. Grace willed him to speak to her, longed for him to tell her what was going through his mind, but he remained resolutely silent. And he gave nothing away, his face like a mask, giving her no hint of whatever he was feeling. He was so like his father, Grace thought. Now was not the time to mention it, but he would make an amazing poker player. Grace hoped, tho
ugh, that her son would have no cause to use that impenetrable expression, unlike Charles, who had managed to keep his secrets for thirty years.
Hector didn’t utter a single syllable all the way back to the Hall, and when they arrived he took himself off to his part of it without a word.
‘Don’t you think we ought to talk about this?’ Grace called after him, but he didn’t even acknowledge that she had spoken.
It was a shock. Grace understood that. Hector had had no way of seeing what was just around the corner, and when he ran headlong into it there had been no time to slam on the brakes and minimise the impact. It must be hard enough for him to deal with the fact that he now had a half-sister, but worse, so much worse than that was what he had been forced to accept about his father. Everything that he had always known and had no reason whatsoever to doubt had just been slit open in front of his eyes like a hunted stag, so graceful and majestic one moment and sliced to its core the next. Hector had always idealised his father. This would take time to process, Grace knew. She had to give him that and be there for him when he was ready to talk, whenever that was.
Clio was less of an immediate worry, but it had stung Grace to discover that she had known about her father and not said anything. Then again, wasn’t that exactly what she had done to Clio herself? Part of her was proud of the way that Clio had behaved in the face of the truth, but what a thing it was to be proud of. At least she hadn’t had to keep it locked inside for as long as she had, and for that Grace was very grateful. And of course, Clio hadn’t been on her own. She had had Leah and, even though she hadn’t shared their secret, Grace could tell how important that relationship had become to her daughter. Leah would not feel like an imposter to Clio, which she must surely do to Hector – a cuckoo in his nest.