Where The Story Starts

by Imogen Clark

  And then there was Leah. Grace found herself worried about her, too. They had dumped the horrible truth on her and then just walked away, leaving her to deal with the emotional fallout alone. With the benefit of a little distance between her and the situation, this now seemed to Grace like a particularly rash thing to have done. She had been worried about Hector and put his needs front and centre, but now she couldn’t help but remember the way that Melissa had reacted after learning how she had been duped by Charles. Would her daughter follow a similar path? Grace couldn’t bear the idea of that on her conscience. Leah was strong – Grace knew that from her Mrs Newman days – but even the strong could be floored by something like this.

  ‘Do you think Leah will be all right?’ she asked Clio as they walked across the gravel towards the front door of the Hall.

  Clio shrugged. ‘I don’t know for certain,’ she said, ‘but I think so. Leah’s so tough. She just takes things in her stride. She’s achieved so much on her own, you know, Mum. Her kids are fantastic and she doesn’t let anything get her down. She just gets on with it. Honestly, she’s been amazing with me.’ Clio was smiling and shaking her head as if she didn’t quite believe what it was that she was saying. ‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know how you’d react, but she got me a job. It’s in a pub – the one where her mum worked, actually. I thought I’d make a terrible barmaid. I mean, me! Behind a bar!! Can you imagine? But it turns out I’m actually quite good. And it was Leah that had faith in me. She knew I could do it. And she was right.’

  Grace looked at her daughter in astonishment, her mouth dropping open. ‘My darling,’ she said, a proud smile forming on her lips. ‘You never fail to surprise me. Well done you. Does Hector know?’

  ‘God, no! Can you imagine? Actually, Mum, we are going to have to do something about him. We can’t let him sell the house.’

  ‘It’s not his to sell,’ replied Grace. ‘The house belonged to your father, and according to his will all his assets passed to me. But I think the bigger issue will be getting him to deal with what he’s just learned. You’ve seen how he’s coping with your father’s death.’

  ‘Or not coping.’

  ‘Well, precisely,’ said Grace. ‘He totally idolised your father. More fool him, but there you have it. It was hard enough having Charles taken from us so suddenly, without the chance to say goodbye, but now there’s this new thing as well. I think it’s going to be very difficult for him.’

  Clio took Grace’s hand in hers, and Grace felt her daughter run her thumb up and down the veins that stood proud just as she had done when she was a child. ‘And what about you, Mum?’ she said. ‘What must this all be like for you?’

  Grace took her daughter into her arms so that she couldn’t see her face, and held her there tightly. ‘Oh, I’m all right, darling. Don’t worry about me,’ she said quietly, and then bit her lip hard to stop the tears.

  It was three full days before Hector was ready to speak to her. Grace was aware of his presence as he moved, ghostlike, from one part of the Hall to another, but whenever it seemed as if their paths might cross, he slipped away. He would talk when he was good and ready, Grace knew. She just had to bide her time and wait.

  On the third evening after the trip to Whitley Bay, Grace was collapsed in front of the television, a glass of wine in her hand. She wasn’t really watching whatever was on, but she found the low voices comforting and it stopped her having to think. When she heard Hector stomping through the Hall towards her, her heart sank. She didn’t have the strength for another row. Not now.

  Hector began speaking without preamble the moment he appeared in the room. He had the dishevelled look of someone who had slept in their clothes, his hair unwashed and a light sprinkling of sandy stubble shadowing his cheeks.

  ‘We need to go to the solicitor’s,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow. This “love child”’ – he drew air quotes around the words – ‘of Dad’s can’t be allowed to make any sort of claim on his estate. We need the situation to be watertight and crystal clear. I don’t want her challenging the will. She’ll no doubt think she’s entitled to a third of everything. She may even try to get her hands on this place. She has to be stopped.’

  He wasn’t thinking straight. There was no provision in Charles’s will for any of his children. His entire estate, such as it was, had passed directly to Grace. And when she died she could leave whatever she liked to whomever she chose, although now probably wasn’t the wisest time to point this out to Hector.

  ‘Get yourself a drink,’ she said quietly, nodding at the drinks cabinet.

  The anger that had been radiating from him just a moment ago seemed to drift away like smoke from a fired gun. It was as if he had been an actor playing a part on a stage. Now he appeared to shrink. He shuffled across to help himself to a beer, shoulders hunched and eyes low. Had he been crying? Grace wondered. Despite the new norms of the modern age in which they were living, the thought of a grown man in tears could still move her deeply. The men occupying Hector’s world of boarding school and business suits never cried.

  Grace would do anything to make this better for her son, but there was nothing within her power that might help other than to be there and listen whilst the pieces of what he had discovered slowly slotted into place for him. Who knew how long that might take?

  ‘Come and sit here with me,’ she said gently, patting the sofa next to her.

  Hector looked reluctant for a moment, then let out a huge sigh and slumped on to the cushions next to her. He really was completely broken, Grace thought. All the life had gone from his handsome face and there were more fine lines around his eyes than she had ever noticed before.

  ‘I know this is all very hard to take in,’ Grace began, stroking his big shoulder gently. ‘But you’ll get there in the end. You just need to give yourself time.’

  Hector raised his eyebrows at her, clearly incredulous that he would ever be able to deal with it, or would want to. His eyes were filled with hurt.

  ‘The only person that has done anything wrong here is your father,’ Grace continued. ‘And he isn’t here to defend himself, so we will never know what was going on in his head. Knowing him as I did, I would say that he got himself into something that seemed thrilling and exciting to start with and then, before he knew it, he was in too deep to get out of it.’

  ‘But how could he do that to me?’ Hector asked.

  Grace noted the personal pronoun, but let it go. ‘I’m sure he didn’t intend to hurt anyone,’ she said. ‘He probably thought that he could look after all of us. I mean, he could just have abandoned Melissa when she got pregnant, but he didn’t – well, not then, anyway. He constructed that elaborate web of lies around himself and he made it work for nearly twenty years. As far as I can gather, he only left Melissa when she found out what he’d done and there was a danger of her reporting him to the police. He’d have known that the scandal would have been unfair on us and also very hard to recover from. So at least he did that for us.’

  Hector was chewing on his thumbnail and suddenly he looked like her little boy again, shattered by some issue at school, needing her love and support.

  ‘So, you think we should just let sleeping dogs lie?’ he said, his tawny eyes searching hers for answers.

  ‘I really don’t see that we have any choice,’ replied Grace.

  57

  LEAH – NOW

  Me and the kids were invited to spend Christmas at Hartsford Hall. The invitation, written in Grace’s neat handwriting, had been folded inside the Christmas card that arrived at the beginning of December. I generally let the kids open any cards we got, and it was Noah’s turn. His eyes lit up when he pulled the heavy card out of the creamy envelope. On the front was a picture of the Hall all covered in snow, which glittered slightly when the card caught the light.

  ‘It’s from Clio,’ he said with a smile, without even opening it. The invitation fluttered out and he unfolded it but, faced with too many words to read, he screw
ed his nose up and handed it back to me to decipher. ‘What’s it say, Mum?’

  ‘Oh, the usual Christmassy stuff,’ I replied dismissively, slipping the paper inside the card and stuffing it to the bottom of the pile.

  There was no question of us going. Christmas was a family time and that meant my family – my real family and not all this new lot. We had a carefully created set of Allen family traditions – chocolate for breakfast and looking out of the window to see if Rudolf had eaten his carrot and a race to open our presents all at once, as if someone might snatch them away again at any minute – and there was no way that I was going to trade them in for a day feeling like the poor relations at the Hall.

  It had been a strange few months since the revelations on the beach. We hadn’t heard another word about us being evicted, which was a massive relief. I felt like the house was ours again, even though technically it wasn’t. It was all very ironic. The one fact that I’d known all my life and which had put us head and shoulders above everyone around me had been a lie all along. I was exactly the same as the rest of them – living in a house that belonged to a landlord, or landlady as it turned out. So much for my super-power.

  For a while, I’d tried to feel angry with Dad for what he’d done, but I couldn’t get beyond the anger that I already felt for his part in what had happened to Mum. In that context, the mere sin of being married to both women at the same time seemed neither here nor there. I was angry with Grace for a bit, too, but that hadn’t lasted long. Grace had also been economical with the truth, but she’d kept Dad’s secrets with the best possible motives and, looking back, if she’d been honest with me at the time I might well have just followed Mum over that cliff. It wasn’t fair of me to be angry with her and it was also unsustainable, so that had to be abandoned.

  And what about Clio? Clio was the best thing to come out of all this. Nothing about her or her attitude to me changed in the aftermath. And now she was my sister as well as my best friend. No wonder the two of us seemed to understand each other so well. We shared 50 per cent of our DNA! And we never allowed any of the double-dad crap to get in the way.

  She rang me that first night after it had all come out, and we’d spoken every day since. She was determined not to let anything spoil our relationship and so far, it seemed to be working.

  ‘Did you get Mum’s card?’ she asked when she rang the day after it had arrived.

  ‘Yup,’ I replied non-committally. I’d been waiting for her to mention the invitation, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with it.

  ‘So?’ she said in her bouncy puppy kind of voice. ‘Will you come? Please say you will. It’ll be so lovely to have you and the children with us. You have no idea how tedious it is to get through a Christmas dinner with Hector. He just seems to suck the fun out of everything these days.’

  Well, that was hardly surprising. I’d had no further dealings with him since the meeting on the beach and I had no desire to either, let alone at Christmas.

  Clio must have gathered my reluctance from my hesitation. ‘Oh, please!’ she begged, but in that second I knew I wasn’t going to change my mind.

  ‘I’m sorry, Clio,’ I said firmly, ‘but we like Christmas our way, with just the three of us. The kids’ll get cross if I start messing with the Allen family traditions.’

  It was maybe a little cruel to put it like that, but it was true. We might be sisters but we weren’t part of the same family.

  ‘Oh,’ replied Clio. She sounded like a little girl who’s been told she can’t have a pony. ‘That’s such a shame. But I suppose I understand. Christmas Day is special for children. I can see why you wouldn’t want to change things. Especially not this year.’

  I relaxed, relieved that Clio seemed to be taking my refusal so well. I should have known she was up to something.

  ‘But,’ she continued slyly, ‘I bet you’re free on Boxing Day. Come then instead. We’ll shut ourselves away in my place and you won’t have to go anywhere near the main Hall. I’ll get Marlon to come too. We can have our own little Christmas, just the five of us.’

  I was snookered. I couldn’t come up with an excuse fast enough and anyway, would it be so very dreadful to spend Boxing Day with my best friend and my – I couldn’t quite use the word without squirming just a little bit – boyfriend in a stately home with someone else doing the cooking?

  I heard myself sigh down the phone. ‘Okay, Clio. You win.’

  A little cheer came back at me.

  The trains were chaotic on Boxing Day, so Marlon came to collect us. I saw the battered Volvo pull up outside and my heart sang. I wasn’t really sure when things had switched from Marlon being quirky and good fun to me feeling like he was a part of me, but somewhere along the line that had happened. Marlon was everything I’d never gone for in a man before, and yet here I was, skipping up and down by the window at the sight of him like I was Poppy’s age. When I thought about it, though, perhaps it was precisely because he wasn’t like any of the others that made it feel so right.

  He climbed out of the car and then opened the boot and took a present out. Shit. We’d agreed no presents and I, true to my word, hadn’t bought him anything. I was going to look like a proper Charlie now.

  As I opened the door, my mouth was already open to object to his unfair breaking of our rule, but he put his finger to his lips.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say, but this isn’t for you.’

  He waved the present at me and despite my annoyance of a moment before, I now felt disappointed. The present was beautifully wrapped in silvery paper with a big red bow and masses of curling ribbon.

  ‘Is it for the kids?’ I asked. ‘Should I get them?’

  Marlon screwed his nose up. ‘It is for them, kind of, but I think maybe you should open it.’

  I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘So, it is for me?’

  He nodded sheepishly. ‘Okay. You got me. But when you open it, you’ll see that I didn’t really break the rules.’

  Desperate to see what it was, I yanked at the ribbon and ripped open the paper. Inside was a wooden frame. I flipped it over, glancing up at Marlon as I did.

  It was a drawing of Poppy and Noah. This wasn’t like the many simple sketches that Marlon had done of me over the previous few months. It was a proper picture, my children’s faces brought to life with light and shadows. It could have been a photograph, it was so detailed. It actually took my breath away.

  ‘Do you like it?’ he asked anxiously, and I realised that I hadn’t said a word.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ I whispered. ‘It’s the most incredibly perfect present that anyone has ever given me.’ I could feel tears brimming in my eyes and I wiped them away with the back of my hand. ‘Thank you, Marlon. Thank you,’ I said, flinging my arms around his neck, the picture still in my hand.

  Marlon wrapped his arms around me and held me tight. It felt good.

  ‘And am I forgiven?’ he asked. ‘For breaking your “No Christmas Presents” rule?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said grudgingly, squeezing him a little tighter. ‘But don’t do it again!’

  The four of us piled into the car. Christmas was turning out to be unseasonably mild with no need for even a coat, but Noah insisted on wearing a hat and gloves.

  ‘But Nono,’ I said. ‘It’s not even cold. Let’s leave your hat and gloves here in case you forget them.’

  But he was adamant, so in the end I gave in. If you can’t indulge your kids at Christmas then it’s a pretty poor do.

  As the car pulled off the main road and into the estate, Noah started to look anxiously about him from left to right.

  ‘What’s up, No?’ asked Poppy.

  ‘Where’s all the snow?’ he said.

  ‘What snow?’ replied Poppy. ‘We’ve had no snow this winter.’

  ‘The snow!’ he insisted, pulling his hat further down over his ears. ‘There’s snow here. I saw it on Clio’s Christmas card!’

  We all laughed at him, we co
uldn’t help it, and he continued to harrumph until we reached the gravelled area in front of the main doorway.

  The Hall looked beautiful. The front had been decorated with thousands of tiny fairy lights which all twinkled, and there were two tall Christmas trees flanking the front door. A huge wreath of ivy and holly berries hung from the knocker. It was made from real branches, I noticed, not plastic ones.

  It didn’t matter how many times I came here. I would never get used to it. And now it had the added mystery of being the place that Dad had been when he wasn’t with us in our tiny terraced house. The two sides of his secret life couldn’t have been more different. I sometimes wondered which part he liked best, but if I thought about that too deeply it made me cry, so I tried not to.

  Marlon edged the car a little further on until we were outside the slightly less grand door to Clio’s wing. She had fairy lights, too, but her wreath was made of felt with brightly coloured birds on little springs that stuck out at mad angles.

  Her door opened and Clio appeared wearing a red dress with snowflakes on it.

  ‘Look, Nono,’ I said. ‘There’s your snow!’

  Noah tutted, but he was so delighted to see Clio that he seemed to forget his disappointment. ‘Auntie Clio, Auntie Clio! Look what I brought,’ he said, thrusting his gloves under her nose.

  He’d insisted on calling her that after I’d explained how we were all connected. I wasn’t keen on it, but Clio was thrilled to bits so I’d let it go. Poppy just stuck to plain Clio.

  ‘Are they new?’ Clio asked him. ‘Wait! I got some too. We can be Glove Twins.’

  ‘Glove Twins! Glove Twins!’ chanted Noah as he danced around her.

  ‘Shall we go in?’ asked Clio, stepping aside, and Poppy and Noah made their way straight through to the den where all the games were waiting. I was about to object, but Clio waved a hand.

  ‘Let them go,’ she said. ‘They don’t want to listen to boring grown-up talk.’

  In Clio’s lounge there was a tray already laid out with loads of nibbles and a bottle of champagne cooling in a silver bucket. The room was lit with lots of candles even though it wasn’t dark outside. Her Christmas tree was more of a twig than a tree, but it was elegant and tasteful without any tinsel or children’s doily-angels to clutter it up. Simple glass baubles hung from every branch. Everything just oozed class.