Mum flinched. As did I. As did Annabelle. It was good to know she was in there because up until then she’d been completely unresponsive and I was worried her past drug-taking had caused an emotional deficit.
‘I got married,’ Dad continued. ‘And bought a house. I had a daughter.’ He glanced at Mum, knowing his words were painful, then looked back at us for our reaction. But he hadn’t said anything that we didn’t already know from Mum and I found myself getting irritated.
‘What about us?’ I said, indicating Annabelle and myself with a flick of my index finger. ‘Why did you decide to bring children into all this?’
Mum and Dad had told me that Annabelle was such a difficult baby that they’d waited four years before trying again. But now I wondered if this was in fact true. Mum and Dad looked at each other.
‘I’d read about the pill being bad for you,’ Mum said, playing with her tiger’s eye pendant, her eyes on her lap. ‘So we moved on to . . . other methods. And they weren’t as . . . thorough.’ She looked up. ‘Annabelle, dear, you were an accident.’
Annabelle blinked. Dad’s mouth flapped and his hand rose in Mum’s direction as if to slow her progression but Mum barrelled right on.
‘And Jess dear, we always told you the reason you and Annabelle have such a big age gap was because Annabelle was a difficult baby but that’s not true. You were an accident too.’
Dad patted Mum’s hand. ‘What Mum means to say is that none of this was intentional. And accident or not, you are two of the most loved children on this planet.’
‘But we were both accidents?!’ I exclaimed.
Mum began to snivel. ‘Happy accidents.’
‘Wonderful accidents,’ Dad said, his eyes shining.
The room fell silent, save for Mum’s snuffles.
‘So what now, then?’ I said, after glancing at Annabelle, who seemed to have been shocked into a blank silence. ‘What do we do? We can’t just all continue this . . . this bullshit lie that we’re a normal family!’
Mum began to weep. Dad passed her his handkerchief and rested his hand on hers. She gripped it fiercely.
‘You’re right,’ Dad said, his voice breaking. ‘We let it go too far.’ He looked at Mum sobbing into her hanky. ‘And I’m afraid all I’ve done is hurt the people I love the most.’
I glowered at my father.
‘About six months ago, I realised I’d be retiring soon. And with my career coming to an end . . . so would the travelling between offices.’ Dad looked at us to see if we understood.
I didn’t know about Annabelle, because her face was still a picture of neutrality, but I understood nothing.
‘Which means,’ Dad continued, ‘basing myself in one place.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
I understood. He meant choosing where to live. Choosing a family.
‘And where will that be?’ I asked, my voice quiet.
I was keenly aware of Annabelle’s unmoving presence next to me, waiting for an answer. Mum and Dad looked at each other.
‘I don’t know,’ Dad said eventually.
That was unacceptable. Parents were supposed to know what to do. It was an unwritten part of the job description.
Annabelle, inert until then, had a sudden realisation. ‘Is that what you guys meant when you said it was time to live honestly and let everybody know the truth?’
I turned to her in disbelief. Had I heard something like that I would have done some investigation. I would have assumed there was a secret that needed outing, but not Annabelle.
Mum looked up from her hanky, snivelling. ‘When did you hear that?’
‘About six months ago, when Katie had that reaction and we were all at the hospital.’
‘Six months ago?!’ I cried. ‘When they were first discussing it?’
‘It seems so, yes.’ Annabelle was unfazed. ‘That’s when Mum started crying a lot and signing up for retreats and being weird.’
‘I was not being weird!’ Mum said, insulted to her twofaced core.
‘Well, that’s just great!’ I said. ‘You heard them talking about revealing some big secret and you didn’t click that it might be in any way significant?! If you’d told me what you’d heard, this could all have been over months ago!’
Mum, Dad and Annabelle looked at each other.
‘What would that have achieved that is different to finding out now?’ Mum said, her expression curious.
‘Well.’ I scrambled for a solid reason. ‘We could have found out in a better way, you know, with a therapist present or something. I dunno . . . We wouldn’t have organised this big expensive party that we now have to cancel.’
Mum and Dad looked at each other.
‘Oh no, the party will still go ahead, right Teddy?’ Mum said.
‘Yes, we should still have the party,’ Dad nodded.
‘But it’s a lie!’ I said, incredulous. ‘Everything is a lie! You’ll be standing in front of your friends and family lying. And you want Annabelle and me to do it with you?’ I looked at Annabelle for backing but she had gone back to concentrated stillness.
‘Why shouldn’t we celebrate together?’ Mum said. ‘It’s still our birthdays. It’s still our anniversary.’
I scoffed at the word.
‘We’ve had forty years together,’ Dad said quietly. ‘Nothing, nothing can make that untrue.’ He looked at me, a note of determination in his voice. ‘We should have the party.’
I looked at Annabelle. Her gaze rested on our parents, assessing the pair of them. I turned back to Mum and Dad sitting side by side, holding hands like they always did at dinner tables and breakfast tables, train rides and car journeys. Side by side like a couple of ducks. How could that be a lie? They were a couple. We were a family. It was a lie and it wasn’t a lie. They loved each other. Without their explanation I’d already known it. Everyone who knew them knew it. My thoughts shot around my head like a room full of spooked budgies. And the fact that I couldn’t pin even one of them down made me feel confused and powerless. And here were Mum and Dad talking about having a party?! I was suddenly furious. I leapt to my feet and threw my coffee cup at the wall. It smashed and the dregs of my coffee splattered on a retro lamp Annabelle had re-covered herself. Everybody jumped up, shocked.
‘EVERYTHING IS ONE BIG LIE!’ I shouted.
‘Jess,’ Annabelle said, suddenly at my side.
Mum’s bony hands clung to Dad’s arm. With Annabelle and I standing beside the sofa bed and Mum and Dad standing opposite us, their eyes wide and fearful, we were a family divided.
Dad looked at me for a moment then his chest sank like he’d been wounded. ‘Jess, the love isn’t a lie.’ He squeezed Mum’s shoulders. ‘You can’t help who you love.’
It angered me further. How could they be so selfish to think this little arrangement wouldn’t affect anyone else? Couldn’t they keep their pants on? Or at least a condom on?
‘We’re not even a family any more!’
‘But Plum,’ Mum said with an imploring look, tears trickling down her face. ‘Did you ever feel unloved?’
I looked at them both, my eyes burning with fury. My answer was simple and easy. No, I hadn’t. I’d always felt very loved. And somehow that made it seem even more of a betrayal. Tears pricked my eyes. Hot angry tears.
‘How could you?’ I shook my head. ‘How could you?!’
I grabbed my bag, flung on my jacket and shoes, and, after throwing a look to Annabelle asking if she was OK and receiving a stoic nod in return, I flew out of the door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
‘I’m sorry, I just had to get out of there. Are you OK?’ I said into the phone as my taxi turned down my street.
‘Yes,’ Annabelle said. ‘I think so.’
I’d called Annabelle as soon as I was in the cab out of the rain. She said Mum and Dad were very upset and that Dad was almost inconsolable.
‘What do we do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Annabelle said.
&nbs
p; ‘Me neither.’ I passed the driver some money and slid out of the car. ‘How do you feel?’
Annabelle waited a beat before answering. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Me neither.’ I stepped over some bin bags that a fox had clearly had a go at. ‘What are they doing now?’
‘About to head home. Mum’s rubbing baking soda on the lamp.’
‘God, sorry about that.’
‘It’s OK.’
I reached my flat and looked up at the cracked bricks above the front door that I’d repeatedly told our landlord could collapse at any moment and decapitate someone. ‘We’ll get through this, won’t we?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
Annabelle let out a delicate breath. ‘I don’t know. But we will.’
I stood at my front door, my house keys in my hand. ‘Yeah.’
‘I’d better go,’ Annabelle said. ‘I’ve got to meet Marcus and bring the kids home. I’ll call you later, OK?’
I hung up, entered my flat, hung my coat on the hallway hook and noticed the change immediately. It felt, apart from Dave sitting on the sofa watching a zombie movie and eating cornflakes from a salad bowl, empty.
‘Hey,’ I said, dropping my bag on the dining table and scanning the room.
‘How’s it going?’ he said, not removing his eyes from the TV.
‘My whole life is a lie and I’ve been roofied by my mother and sister.’
‘Stink,’ Dave said, twisting in his position to see the roofie damage. ‘Wanna talk about it?’
‘No.’
He bobbed his head as if to say ‘I get that’ and turned back to the TV while I walked around the flat. Pete had been and gone and removed almost all trace of him having lived there. And it was only 11.17 a.m. To be fair, he hadn’t ever been much into home decor, all the little unnecessary touches that make a house a home had been bought by me (or upcycled and gifted by Annabelle), so he didn’t have much stuff that was ‘his’. Pete was more a functional item owner. If it didn’t do anything practical then he wasn’t interested in the ceramic vase that stood on chicken feet. Or the crocheted owl so ugly I had to buy it and give it a home and a name (Rastus, in case you’re interested), and who now lives on the recovered 1930s sofa I’d found at Camden Market before it got expensive and touristy.
So even with Rastus untouched and the chicken-feet vase still on the dining table that Annabelle and I had bought on eBay then spray-painted glossy white, I knew he’d taken everything that was his. The weights that usually sat under the coffee table for his evening reps while watching a sports documentary were gone; only a dent in the carpet where they’d been kept for the past four years remained. The Men’s Fitness magazines he kept in date order on a side table were gone too.
I moved to the bedroom. His drawers were empty, as was his side of the wardrobe. He’d taken the hangers because he was very fussy about what kind of hangers he hung his uniform shirt on. Too long and they created a sticky-out bit down his arm, too thin and they stretched it and did something else but I’d stopped listening, telling him I was getting closer to death with each passing second and I didn’t want to devote any more of them to talking about hanger damage in what was effectively a school sports uniform worn by a grown man. His manscaping products were gone from the bathroom; his ankle weights, therabands, skipping rope and various other fitness apparatus were no longer under the bed. The top of his bedside table was bare. In the kitchen, all he’d taken was his super-powered blender, his industrial-sized cans of protein powder and a fridge magnet his sister had sent him from Bali of a lizard on a surfboard.
I walked back through the flat looking at all the holes left by Pete’s departure. I thought about my childhood and all those times Dad wasn’t there – supposedly working but actually living his ‘real’ life with his ‘real’ family. Holes in my childhood, holes in my home . . . Man, I’m grim, I thought, shocked at my mood. The Verve were right: the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse. I was not cut out for come-downs. After googling how to fast-track a cannabis purge from the body I arrived back in the living room and stood behind the sofa watching the credits, dripping like blood, roll up the TV screen.
‘Were you here when he took everything?’ I asked.
Dave twisted in his seat again. ‘I was in my room,’ he said, watching my reaction. ‘He had someone helping him. A girl.’
‘Yeah, I know who she is.’
Dave took a bite of his toast sandwich and watched me as he chewed. ‘Wanna watch the new Evil Dead again?’ he said after swallowing his mouthful.
‘Definitely.’ I climbed over the sofa, pulled a crocheted blanket onto my lap and curled up among the cushions.
*
We ordered pizza, watched hours and hours of zombie stuff, then Dave got ready for work (ate toothpaste) and left. In the subsequent silence my mind went immediately to Jimmy. With everything else falling apart, leaving me feeling completely powerless, that was one area where I could take action. I flicked open my laptop and called him on Skype.
After a mere two rings Jimmy’s face appeared, the sun in the faultless blue sky shining bright behind him. From the angle, I could tell he was sitting at the kitchen island.
‘Hi,’ he said, his expression loaded with unspoken questions.
I hadn’t seen or spoken to him since I’d raced out of Sylvie’s restaurant a week ago. So much had gone on in that time that it felt simultaneously like it had been an age and also like it was just yesterday. His face was still beautiful.
My stomach erupted into frenzied butterflies.
‘Can I talk to Flora, please?’ I said, affecting a polite enquiry.
There was a moment where he looked confused, then his eyes sparkled and a small grin appeared.
‘Sure,’ he said, his voice warm. He disappeared for a moment then came back and positioned Flora on his lap. ‘She’s a bit tired from our walk this morning so if she doesn’t say much don’t be offended.’
I giggled. ‘So, Flora, I wanted to ask your opinion on a guy.’
‘Oh yes?’ I imagined Flora to say. ‘Fucked something up did you? It doesn’t surprise me.’
‘I slept with him and said I’d call but didn’t,’ I said. ‘So I want to apologise but I don’t know how to go about it.’
Jimmy smiled behind Flora, who gave her customary black-eyed assessment with muppet-eared head tilt.
‘I hardly think the male in question would have waited around for someone like you, but should he have low enough self-esteem to do so, I suggest you go up to him and sniff his butt.’
‘Uh-huh,’ I nodded. ‘Then what?’
‘Turn around and let him sniff yours. Then lie on your back and expose yourself.’
‘That sounds kind of desperate.’
Jimmy made a quizzical face.
‘It works a charm for me.’
‘I might go for something less . . . forward,’ I said, glancing at Jimmy, who was grinning.
‘Lame,’ Flora put a paw to Jimmy’s chest. ‘I’d like to get down now, this conversation has been a waste of good crotch-licking time.’
‘You two girls done talking?’ Jimmy said.
‘Yep,’ I said as Jimmy ducked out of view to lower Madam Floof to the floor then reappeared. ‘She wants me to sniff your butt.’
‘I wouldn’t advise that,’ he said, seriously. ‘Diego made beans for breakfast.’
I smiled. ‘So, what do you say? Can you forgive me for not replying to your texts or calls?’
‘Or skypes, or Facebook messages?’
‘Yes, all of those,’ I said, feeling truly sorry. ‘I’ve had a bit going on.’
‘I know,’ Jimmy said. ‘I wanted to see if you were OK.’
I cringed. ‘Sorry.’
Flora ruff-ruffed in the background. Jimmy looked down at her then turned back and faced the screen again. ‘She really wants you to sniff my butt,’ he said, then cracked into a winning smile.
‘Jimmy, I cannot take this
any more! I refuse to be caught in the middle of—’ Diego’s voice boomed from somewhere in the room and then stopped as he passed behind Jimmy and spotted me. ‘Oh hello there, sweet girl! We miss you – when are you coming back?’
‘One day, hopefully,’ I said, grinning.
He grinned back then turned to Jimmy and his smile fell and his brow lowered. ‘Well, thank god you’ve called – we need someone who this domkop will actually listen to!’
Jimmy reddened and I felt myself flush with the compliment.
‘Jimmy got his script in on time, you know. And guess what? He got offered one of the placements! He has to be in London in May to do that summer course at the production company.’
My hopes fluttered at the thought of Jimmy coming to London. ‘That’s amazing! Congratulations!’ I beamed at Jimmy, whose face was not the picture of glee you’d imagine. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Exactly,’ Diego said, his muscled arms folded across his huge pecs. He looked at Jimmy expectantly.
‘I can’t take the placement,’ Jimmy said, his expression one of firm resolve.
‘Of course you can!’ Diego said.
‘I can’t,’ Jimmy said. ‘I can’t afford the course fees. And I can’t afford to live in London for three months unpaid. I can barely afford to live here in your basement!’
‘Argh! You’re talking kak!’ Diego leant his elbows on the counter next to Jimmy and spun the laptop his way. ‘Jimmy’s Dad has offered, via Ian, of course, because those two still can’t get their shit together, to lend him the money and for Jimmy to stay at home but he,’ he gave Jimmy some heavy side-eye, ‘is refusing.’
Jimmy spun the laptop towards him. ‘I am not refusing; I’m saying I won’t go.’
‘That’s refusing!’ Diego said, pushing back into the frame.
‘Yeah, but when you say refusing like that it makes me sound like a child.’
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