by Caro Fraser
Bella sighed. ‘It’s a process of rebuilding, I suppose. I start from nothing. I am nothing.’
‘That’s not true. There’s more to identity than–’
‘Than what? Knowing who your mother and father are? Knowing why they gave you away?’ She finished her wine and refilled her glass. Adam had drunk only half of his. ‘Though I think I know the answer to that one. Charlie and I were worth more to our real parents in terms of money than as children. Their children.’ Her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I thought – well, not that George Meacher said anything… I suppose I had the usual stereotypical situation in mind. Some young girl, pregnant by accident – that kind of thing…’ Bella dashed away her tears. ‘Yes, well, guess what? My real parents were married. They already had a son. They just didn’t want me, or Charlie. They preferred money instead.’ She told Adam, jerkily, everything that Cecile had told her. ‘So – all my life I’ve had another brother, and I didn’t know.’
There was a silence. Adam felt totally inadequate, quite unable to find any words that would help Bella in her anchorless, unhappy state. He noticed the cigarette packet lying at the end of the table. He flicked it towards her.
Bella sighed and shook her head. ‘I gave up this morning. It’s empty.’ She picked up the packet and crushed it between both hands. ‘Part of the new me. Whoever I am, she doesn’t smoke.’ She got up to drop the packet in the wastepaper basket.
‘What will you do now?’
‘Oh, Christ, how do I know?’ She moved across to the window. The sky outside was deepening to dusk. She flicked the blind shut. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so angry. Not with you.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. You have every right. I meddled.’
‘Stop apologizing. I’ve asked myself hundreds of times whether it wouldn’t be better if I’d never found out. That’s pointless. I have to face the fact that I know, and decide what to do about it.’ She came back and sat down. ‘My mother gave me the address of the house my parents were living in when Charlie and I were adopted. Somewhere in Deptford, of all places. That’s all I have to go on. Because it was all done privately, it’s not as though there’s some great DSS file on me. The chances are they moved away long ago.’
‘Do you want me to help?’
‘How d’you mean?’ She rubbed her eyes and poured him some more wine.
‘I could go round there, make some inquiries. Good investigative journalism.’
‘I could do that myself, you know.’
‘True. I just thought it might be harder for you – I mean, you don’t know what you’re going to find. Or who. If someone else goes, it’s at arm’s length. You can feel your way.’
‘I’d thought of writing. God knows what I’d say. Anyway, writing or going there, the whole thing could well be pointless. It’s so long ago.’
‘You don’t know. It’s worth trying. I take it you want to make some kind of contact?’
Bella gave a heavy sigh. ‘Yes. Having spent my entire life thinking I was the real daughter of Harry and Cecile… Well, having that shot from under you leaves a hell of a hole, I can tell you.’
Adam pondered this. ‘It doesn’t change the fact of who you are. All the things that have happened to you since the day Harry and Cecile adopted you – they’re the really important things. The people who have been there in your life matter more than the ones who weren’t.’
‘That’s so trite, so easy to say! How do I know what I’ve lost? How can I ever recover what’s been taken from me?’
‘It’s not trite,’ said Adam. He gazed down at his glass. ‘I lost my mother when I was eight. My father effectively farmed me out to boarding school because he didn’t know what else to do with me. I must have seen him all of nine times – the longest was for a whole week – until he died when I was nineteen. So I do know a little of what I’m talking about.’
‘God, I’m sorry… It’s very selfish of me, thinking I’m the only one that’s had awful things happen to them.’
‘That’s just it.’ Adam smiled. ‘Nothing awful has happened to you. Admittedly, finding out you were adopted is one hell of a thing, but when you consider the life you’ve led this far, you have to ask – couldn’t it have been worse?’
‘But don’t you see? I don’t know! I don’t know how it might have been!’
‘I don’t know how it might have been if my mother hadn’t died,’ said Adam. His eyes darkened a little, and he reached out to refill his glass. She watched his face carefully, thinking how little she knew him. ‘Nobody knows the things that could have happened, all the imponderables. All we can do is play the hand we’ve been dealt.’
Bella leaned her head on her hand, gazing at him thoughtfully. ‘You’re quite a lonely guy, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t know about that. Alone, perhaps. I suppose from an early age I’ve seen myself as – well, fairly singular. You know… Everyone else at boarding school had something stable in their background: a family, parents, brothers, sisters, somewhere they came from. I had my aunt and uncle. Lovely people, but they were very much guardians. They weren’t where I came from. They were where I went in the holidays. So I’ve always been a bit of a loner, self-reliant. But I like being by myself. I like my thoughts, my work.’
There was something touching in the way he spoke, and she gave a small smile and stretched out her hand to his. It was a slight, friendly gesture, lasting no more than a second. Adam wished it didn’t have such an electric effect on him. He drank off the remains of his wine, conscious suddenly of an almost imperceptible alteration in the atmosphere between them. Bella spoke, as if to fill the silence. ‘I take it that was your girlfriend – the one you were with at Toby’s wedding?’
‘Yes.’
‘Long term?’
‘You could say. So far… That is – I don’t know.’ His eyes met hers. ‘You know.’ Adam wondered how she would react if he said what he really thought. Along the lines of, It was all going along fine until I met you, sat next to you in church. Since then, I don’t know what I think about her, about anything.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Megan.’
‘What does she do?’
‘She works in PR. Vosper Barker Finch.’
‘I’ve heard of them. Maybe she’d like to do a bit of PR on this wretched play of ours.’ Bella yawned. ‘Sorry. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. So, tell me more about her.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m interested.’
‘Why?’
‘I’d just like to know.’ Bella sipped her wine and gave Adam a wry smile. ‘After all, she was the reason you turned me down.’
‘No, she wasn’t.’
‘I distinctly remember you saying at the time that you didn’t want to sleep with me because you had a girlfriend.’
Adam leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He had no idea what to say to this. He had never met anyone so constantly challenging, so intensely provocative and evidently insecure.
Bella shrugged. She lifted the empty bottle and waggled it mournfully. ‘I’ll get us another.’
‘No, look–’
But she’d already gone through to the kitchen. A moment later she reappeared with another bottle and refilled Adam’s glass and her own. She snuggled into the cushions in her corner of the sofa, and they sat there and talked about their childhoods, mulling over questions about one’s sense of identity, of self. After an hour or so, Bella said, ‘This is lovely, getting pissed with you.’
‘That wasn’t quite the point of this evening.’
‘Yes it was. Is. You came round to make me feel better, and I do.’
‘I’m not going to be able to drive back, you know. I’ll have to get a cab.’
‘You don’t have to go. Stay. Stay the night.’
Some contemplative seconds passed while Adam put together what he felt he should say. He set down his glass. ‘That time – the night you came to my room at your stepmother’s house – it wasn’t
just to do with Megan. It was because I hardly knew you. We’d only just met. And now you’re doing it again.’
‘Actually, I’m offering you the spare bed.’
Adam laughed, and then she laughed. They looked at one another for a long time. Adam simply couldn’t take his eyes away from hers. It was the kind of moment in which a hundred things happen without anyone doing anything. At its end, at its perfect conclusion, Adam leaned across. She came to him, and he kissed her in a state of utter and close absorption. It was amazing, perfect.
He drew one finger gently down her cheek. ‘God, you are beautiful. And a bit drunk. And full of problems. To which casual sex is not the answer.’
‘It might help.’
Before he could answer this, the phone trilled from the kitchen. While Bella rose to answer it, Adam sat in a state of dazed arousal, trying to recover his senses. All he had to do was to get up, put on his jacket… He could take a chance on driving home. He couldn’t be that far over the limit.
Before he could stir himself into any kind of action, Bella came back. ‘That was Cecile. She’s told Charlie.’ She sat down, white-faced.
‘But you said–’
‘I know, I know. But she seems to have had some kind of crisis of conscience. Said she realized how unfair it would have been to burden me, it was her duty, stuff like that…’
‘What happened?’
‘Charlie went round to see her earlier this evening after work. She’s making the dresses for Claire’s stupid bridesmaids, and he was dropping something off. I don’t know… Anyway, she told him. Where she found the courage, I can’t imagine. I know she would be terrified of how Charlie would react.’
‘And how did he react?’
‘She didn’t say. She couldn’t, really. She seemed quite… overwrought. I suppose it’s pretty hellish, going through the same ordeal twice in two days, telling your adult children they’re not who they think they are.’
‘But out of the blue? At least with you there was some kind of build-up, you already knew there was a possibility.’
‘I know. I know.’ Bella stared into the distance, head in her hands, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘God knows how he is.’
The phone rang again.
‘I suspect you’re about to find out,’ said Adam.
‘D’you think?’
He nodded. She brushed away her tears and rose to answer it.
This time Adam got up and put on his jacket. He fished for his car keys and waited for Bella to come back.
She nodded. ‘He’s coming over. He sounded – he sounded sort of stunned. A bit out of it. Poor Charlie.’
‘Poor you. Poor both of you.’ He put one hand on her shoulder, touched her face with the other.
‘Thanks for coming round.’
‘Any time. And I meant what I said. If you need my help, just call.’
‘I will. Thanks.’
Adam drove carefully home, trying hard not to think about what had nearly happened between himself and Bella. Failing, he let himself think about it over and over again.
Megan was in when he got home, curled up in short pyjamas on the sofa, watching television.
‘What happened? We waited for you till nine, then we went to that Thai place round the corner. It’s very good. I tried to call you on your mobile, but you must have had it switched off.’
Adam sank into a chair. ‘It was Bella Day. She needed to talk to someone, so I went round to see her.’
Megan gave him a glance. ‘She seems to be making quite a few demands on your time. What’s her particular problem?’
‘It’s to do with the biography. I turned up a piece of information that isn’t exactly welcome news for the family. She was rather upset.’
‘What information?’
‘I honestly can’t tell you. Not right now. It’s still something of a mess.’
‘Oh, that’s great. You spend all Friday evening with some other girl and you can’t even tell me what it’s about.’
‘Come on, Meg. You know everything to do with the biography has to remain confidential for the moment.’
‘So you don’t trust me?’
He could tell she was sparring idly, purely for the sake of it, not out of real annoyance. He reached out a hand. ‘Come here.’
She rose and came across, sat on his lap, and allowed herself to be cuddled. ‘I’m sorry I messed up tonight. We can do something tomorrow.’
‘That’s all right. You’re here now.’ She kissed him, and he kissed her back at some length, trying not to remember the touch and feel and scent of Bella just half an hour ago, knowing that the worst part of his betrayal lay not in having kissed Bella, but in wishing he could do it again. And again, and again… He had, he realized, some rather confused emotions to deal with.
Charlie spent Friday night at Bella’s place. They talked until half three. Bella came into the kitchen the following morning at eleven to find Charlie already up, sitting over coffee in his boxer shorts and unbuttoned shirt, unshaven, still with a stunned, hollowed-out look on his face.
‘How did you sleep?’ asked Bella.
‘Quite well, oddly enough.’ His voice was flat, emotionless. He turned to gaze out of the window at the soft, early sunshine. ‘I’m just trying to get used to feeling utterly… dislocated.’
‘I know what you mean.’ She sat down opposite him, took one of his hands in hers, and together they went through again, as if for reassurance, their new, disjointed feelings.
‘All that thing you take for granted,’ said Bella. ‘That thing of being part of this larger whole. Like when Grandpa died, that idea of some… some past continuity, like his death was part of my story. Our story. And of course, it wasn’t at all.’
‘It was, in a way. If that’s the way we believed it, took it to be.’
‘But not really. I mean, there’s a shadow life out there. There’s something that actually was our real beginning, going on without us. And we’ve spent all that time somewhere else.’
‘I’ve been telling myself I mustn’t look at it that way. Life is real, it’s what it is, what it’s been for us. You know we’ve been lucky.’
‘Yes, I know that. It’s exactly what Mummy said. It’s just… you know, the might-have-been part of things. To know that you began somewhere else, somewhere you were meant to belong.’
Charlie shook his head. ‘I’ve thought about that. We belong to the past we actually have. After all, there’s such a thing as destiny.’
Bella was suddenly reminded of the conversation she had had with Adam the evening before. She felt a little flicker of emptiness. She missed him, or something about him. Probably just because she was tired, and he was the last person to have been kind to her.
‘We are who we are because of what happened,’ went on Charlie. ‘We couldn’t have been any different. That’s simply not what happened.’
‘I know. The point is, nothing in me will feel right until I find out, until I learn who our real family are. If I don’t, it’ll be like a part of me that doesn’t fit, that I can’t place. Don’t you feel that?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘All I feel is… anger. Such anger. Such disbelief.’
‘Were you horrible to her?’
‘To Mother? I was utterly foul. And I don’t blame myself. Not at the moment. I just cannot comprehend how she could let us – let us…’
‘I know. I know all of that.’ There was silence. ‘What I want to know is – do you want to find them?’
‘Jesus, Bell… have you any idea what that might be like? Our brother could be an armed robber, a drug addict – the entire family might be a swarming nest of horrible people. Maybe you’ve got some rosy notion that it will all be wonderful and heart-warming, that–’
‘No! I haven’t any more idea than you do what they’ll be like! Of course I haven’t.’ She got up wearily and poured some coffee from the pot which Charlie had brewed. She instinctively reached to the shelf where she kept her cigarettes.
She remembered, stopped, and sighed. ‘But I’d rather know, I’d rather find out, than wander around day after day, week after week, wondering who they are, what they’re like. Wouldn’t you?’
Charlie stared out of the window, saying nothing.
‘I mean, we have a brother. Not a half-brother, but a proper brother, like you are to me. Aren’t you curious? Wouldn’t you like to meet him? To meet our real mother and father, if you could?’
Charlie thought for a while, and at last he said quietly, ‘I don’t think so. Not necessarily, no. It could start something we’ll both regret for a long time.’
‘How can you say that? Surely it’s the other way round?’
‘Bella, don’t you realize who you are? You’re a well-known actress. You don’t know these people, or what they might be like. They might want to exploit you, us…’
‘Will you stop talking about them like that? They’re our family!’
Charlie looked at Bella, his gaze unsteady. ‘Are they?’
Bella said nothing.
At last she shook her head. ‘Charlie, if I don’t follow this up, I’ll go out of my mind.’
‘But if you do follow it up – well, then, I haven’t really got a choice, have I?’
‘Look, the chances are they haven’t lived at that address for years. It’ll probably come to nothing.’ She watched as Charlie rose, slopped the dregs of his coffee into the sink, and poured himself a fresh cup. ‘I’m just as scared as you are.’
‘No doubt.’ He sat down again. ‘I think I’m just being more realistic.’
‘Adam Downing offered to help.’
‘Oh, Adam Downing… right. The busybody who stirred up this whole mess.’
‘He had no idea. You can’t blame him.’
‘Don’t worry. I know none of it’s his fault.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘So how does he intend to help?’
‘Well, if you like, he’ll go to the address, find out if they still live there…’ Bella watched Charlie’s face, could tell he was working through the advantages of this proposal. ‘That way,’ went on Bella, ‘we only need to get involved if we want to. If–’
‘If what we find isn’t too awful, you mean?’