She studied me through her giant glasses, looking like a lost little girl. Then she nodded and dissolved into sobs.
‘He’s the only man I’ve ever loved,’ she said through sniffs and hiccups. ‘I don’t suppose either of you know what that’s like. To be with only one man.’ She looked at Annabelle. ‘Especially you, dear.’
Annabelle rolled her eyes. Marcus shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
‘What am I going to do?!’ she whimpered into her handkerchief.
‘Why don’t you take up a new hobby?’ Annabelle said.
‘I already do all the hobbies I like.’
‘You could become one of those people who help the elderly?’ I offered.
‘I am the elderly! Aren’t I, Marcus?!’ Mum said with an accusatory glare.
Poor Marcus shrank into the armchair.
‘What about doing extra radio slots?’ I said. ‘Or you could do a course? Or there’s always—’
‘No, no, no!’ Mum flapped her hands at us. ‘What I need is some guidance and there’s no self-help book to help the mistress of the second family!’ Mum stopped flapping her hands mid-air and her eyes widened. ‘I could write one!’
While Mum got out her paisley notebook and furiously wrote notes on her new ‘Mistress Self Help Book’, I made dinner (rang the curry house and cut up Mum’s avocado) in the kitchen. Marcus had taken Annabelle and the kids out for a quick supper before going to Matilda in Covent Garden. They’d piled into Marcus’s Prius in their theatre-going best, smiles stretched wide on their faces and excitement dancing in their eyes. It was weird to have Annabelle acting so sorted while the rest of us seemed to be falling apart. Now that their relationship was out in the open Marcus had been taking Annabelle to all kinds of plays, galleries and restaurants. At the weekends they took the children for picnics and walks and to museums. They were like a miniature romance movie from the 1990s that probably should have starred a middle-aged Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and a couple of kid actors that would grow up to have drug dependencies and bankruptcies and ‘took-home-a-hooker’ scandals.
Dinner arrived and I assembled my curry, laid Mum’s sliced avocado as appetisingly as I could across a plate and headed into the living room to eat in front of the television. After we’d eaten, Mum continued to scribble in her notebook, her passions ignited by the thought of writing the first self-help book of its kind, and I watched a documentary Mum had put on about the evils of dairy farming. I looked away from a cow’s swollen teats to the laundry basket in the corner. In the past it had held a mountain of clean clothes that only ever got sorted when Mum or I tended to it, but now it contained a neat pile of ironed and folded clothes ready to be distributed. I knew the fridge was stocked with healthy food, that Hunter had done his homework and that Katie’s therapies were all booked in for the coming month and had been recorded on the calendar on the fridge. Why were we here? Annabelle was out. The kids were out. And when they came back it would be to a tidy, well-run, warm, happy little home. Annabelle didn’t need us any more. It was Mum and I who turned up every day, like we had done for the past three and a half years. It was Mum and I who were unwilling to let go of what used to be.
The idea that Annabelle might not need my help any more made me feel sad and a bit . . . redundant. Dispensable. And it dawned on me in that moment that Pete had been right. You do need to feel needed in a relationship. It’s just that I’d obviously made my primary relationship with my sister.
‘Mum,’ I said, turning the TV down with a remote. ‘We need to move on.’
‘Yes,’ she said, still scribbling. ‘Good idea, Plum.’
‘Mum?’
She continued her outpouring of ‘mistress’ advice.
‘MUM!’
‘Yes, Plum?’ She looked up, confused.
‘Why are you here?’
‘I’m having dinner with you,’ she said, mystified.
‘Well then, why aren’t we having dinner at your place? Or at my flat? Why are we here?’
‘We always come here, because Annabelle needs . . .’ she trailed off, looking around the tidy living room that had been vacuumed that morning.
I watched her thoughts work their way across her features. Her eyes, behind her giant glasses, darted to and fro. The corners of her mouth fell and she turned to me, bewildered.
‘Annabelle is fine,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that great? Annabelle is finally fine.’
Mum blinked for a moment then dropped her gaze to her lap.
‘Annabelle needs to be allowed to move on,’ I said. ‘Which means we do too.’
‘Yes,’ Mum said quietly.
We sat there with the TV on silent, pictures of cows and milking machines and earnest-looking enviro-journalists on the screen.
‘We’re at a crossroads, aren’t we, Mum?’
‘We are, Plum,’ she nodded, her gaze now somewhere in the middle distance. ‘We are.’
I could sense the plates of my emotional universe shifting and producing a feeling of lightness. I could feel the pride at having come up with that analogy and vowed to start recording my incredible insights. My brief feeling of redundancy shifted and another feeling took its place.
I. Was. Free.
A buzz of delight played in my chest. But Mum looked bereft. Her hands sat unmoving in her lap, her note-scribbling abandoned. Life was changing too quickly for her. I shuffled along the sofa, moved Mum’s notes and laid my head on her lap.
‘Let’s watch something funny,’ I said, turning off the cow documentary with the remote and searching for a comedy that Mum would appreciate.
A little while later, my head still on Mum’s bony little lap, I pulled a cushion close and hugged myself around it. I missed cuddling Lucy on Jimmy’s sofa. And, towards the end, when Flora and I had come to our understanding, I’d been permitted to sit cuddling her too. I looked up at Mum.
‘How come we never had a dog growing up?’
‘Oh, we didn’t think it would be fair on an animal with your father away a lot of the time. It might have got attached. It would have broken its little heart.’
I stared at Mum. It took her a few minutes to take her eyes off Jim Carrey in a tutu to look down at me. She raised her eyebrows in question.
‘Not fair on an animal, Mum?’ I said. ‘What about us?’
‘Well,’ Mum said, trying to tread carefully but failing dismally. ‘We could lie to you. An animal feels.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The next morning was Saturday, the day of the party. And I woke early to a text from Dad calling a family meeting at Annabelle’s. I left my local bakery with a bag of croissants and stepped into the sunny but cold morning with my stomach cramping. What was Dad going to say? He must have come to a decision. Or maybe he had something else to confess to? He had a third family? He had cancer? He had a secret bunker and classified information from the government that chemical warfare was imminent and we needed to take what was in front of us and move immediately to an indefinite subterranean lifestyle?
As I hopped on a bus I scanned the party checklist on my phone. Everything was running smoothly. Nearly all of the 150 people had confirmed, the caterers had finally got their heads around the menu, the function room at the local pub had been decorated, Mum’s dress had arrived from the online eco-shop, Dad’s tux had been dry-cleaned and the Van Morrison cover band had been given their playlist. All we had to do now was turn up.
Annabelle’s flat was quiet when I let myself in. Marcus had taken Hunter and Katie to the park to give us some space. Dad and Mum were in Annabelle’s armchairs, side by side, holding hands, and Annabelle was sat on the sofa across from them. I put the paper bag of croissants on the coffee table next to a tray of untouched tea and took my spot on the sofa next to my sister. It was pretty much the same configuration as three weeks ago except the sofa bed wasn’t out, I wasn’t covered in Wotsits and suffering a roofie comedown and Mum wasn’t ‘soiled by E-numbers’ as she’d taken to saying.
‘W
e’ve come to a decision,’ Dad said. He had dark circles under his eyes and his skin was ashen. It had taken its toll on him.
‘And?’ I said, impatient to hear the outcome so I could book my therapy accordingly.
This was it. Make or break.
Which would we be? The ‘made it’ ones or the broken ones? Dad’s eyes rested on me, then Annabelle and finally fell on Mum, who instantly erupted into agonising, inconsolable tears.
I gasped.
Annabelle, who had remained stoic through the entire period, crumpled like a discarded string puppet.
We were the broken ones.
I was stunned. Even though, in the back of my mind, I knew this was the choice he would make, the choice he should make, I didn’t think it would ever actually happen. My dad, who I knew loved me, who I knew loved Annabelle, who I knew adored my mother, was leaving us.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Dad said, his voice cracking. ‘I’ll . . .’ He gripped Mum’s hand. ‘We’ll start to tell people after the party. I’ll go back to Cape Town and tell Annika and Maryna.’ He wiped tears from under his eyes. ‘I’m so sorry . . . about everything.’ His mouth twisted and he covered his face with a wrinkled, tanned hand, his shoulders shuddering with his muffled sobs.
Annabelle, tears streaming down her perfect cheeks, rushed across the room and fell at his feet, her legs tucked underneath her. ‘Dad, no,’ she cried. She gripped him with her thin arms, her head resting on his lap and her chestnut hair falling across his knees.
Dad clutched her. Tears dripped from his chin as he said sorry over and over again.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
‘If your dress is so tight we can see your pudendum then it is not a dress it’s a compression bandage,’ Pete’s mum, Wendy, said through disgusted crimped lips, her eyes on Giselle.
I choked on my drink and pulled at the low neckline of my own dress.
Pete’s dad looked like he didn’t mind the pudendum at all. ‘I think she looks nice,’ he said, while chomping on a vol-au-vent, the flakes catching in his bushy moustache.
‘I know you do.’ Wendy’s magenta lips crimped further. ‘The whole room knows you do. Stop staring, Gary!’ She glowered at the flakes of vol-au-vent falling down her husband’s substantial stomach then turned to me. ‘It’s very bad taste bringing her here and I told him as much, but he wasn’t listening to his old mum, was he? I’m so sorry, pet; it’s not ruining your night, is it?’
I glanced across the room at Pete and Giselle. With her tanned limbs, tight red dress and elaborate French braid up–do, she looked like a Baywatch babe on a night out. Pete had turned up in an ensemble unfortunately similar to the waiters’ uniform; black suit trousers, navy shirt and maroon waistcoat. Mum and Dad’s friends (the ones who didn’t know him) kept asking him for Campari and sodas, and even though he was attempting to be good-natured about it, his tight smile and glances towards Giselle made me realise he was dying of embarrassment. And that gave me a small comfort.
‘It’s OK,’ I said to Wendy. ‘Well, it’s a bit shit, but he did call and ask and I said yes so I can’t really complain, can I?’
‘No, I guess not,’ Wendy said, and she appeared to be embarrassed on behalf of her son. ‘Oh Gary, would you stop staring!’
I nailed my Campari and soda (I’d wanted to see what all the fuss was about), made my polite excuses and left Gary to be chastised for being male and in possession of eyes and a heartbeat. Giselle had at least had the grace to come over and introduce herself and tell me how kind I was to invite her. I managed not to point out that I hadn’t invited her, and that I was actually quite shocked Pete had still wanted to come. Had I not had a knot in my stomach knowing this was the final time Mum, Dad, Annabelle and I would be together in front of people who thought of us as a normal family and not a shameful ‘B Team’, then Pete and Giselle’s presence would have had me shallow-breathing into a paper bag in the corner of the room, which, by the way, doesn’t work and is just something they do in the movies. But, as it was, I almost didn’t care. Almost. Luckily Mum had already informed everyone who knew Pete and me that we were no longer together so I had no awkward explaining to do. I did get lots more hugs from fragrant ladies ‘in the prime of their lives’, though. And the dapperly dressed men gave me ‘chin up’ nods after their watery gazes flicked disapprovingly from Pete and Giselle to me.
It was weird not having told Pete about what was going on with Mum and Dad. I’d always told him everything about everyone in minute detail for so many years. Now, the biggest thing in the world that could ever happen to me had happened and I wasn’t sharing it with him. As I wove through the partygoers looking for a waiter, and trying to contain my boobs in a dress I’d bought six months ago but, because of all the running, was now too big for me, I thought not about Pete and Giselle, who were at the buffet table, their heads inclined towards one another, giggling at Mum’s mono-mealing options I’d asked the long-suffering caterers to put back on the menu, but about Jimmy.
After Dad had dealt the blow that he was going to stay with his original family, if they’d have him, I’d felt like I had nothing left to lose. I’d called Jimmy as soon as I got home from Annabelle’s with the intention of telling him exactly how I felt; that I liked him more than baby hedgehogs. And perhaps even elephants. And that he should call his dad, tell him he knew about the ‘we’ve got gay kids’ support group thing and that he was proud of him. And sorry. Then borrow money, get on a plane and come and be with me. But Jimmy didn’t answer his phone. Or any of my texts. So instead I’d called Diego.
‘He’s not here, sweet girl,’ Diego had said.
It had only been 11.30 a.m. in Cape Town; a time when Jimmy could usually be found wandering the house in his boxers, Flora trotting behind him, or out on the sun-soaked balcony sipping coffee and intermittently singing or playing an instrument.
‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’
‘No,’ Diego had said and he’d sounded oddly taciturn.
‘Do you know where he is? His phone is off.’
‘No, sorry.’
I braced myself. ‘Did he come home last night?’
Diego made noises of discomfort.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right.’
I’d hung up from Diego, who’d made weak promises to tell him I’d called when he next saw him, and felt unbearably, despairingly heartbroken. Like I’d missed out on something that could have been truly special. But I had no claim over Jimmy; we’d only had that one time together. And I couldn’t expect him to . . . what? Wait around for me in South Africa, a place I loved but had no intention of moving to?
I found a roaming waiter and asked for another Campari and soda.
‘Make it two, actually,’ I said and the guy winked his approval.
When he returned three minutes later I slurped down the first one before he’d even left me, then handed him the empty glass and began on the next one while scanning the room for Annabelle. I spotted her across the bustling room, introducing some old family friends to Marcus. She looked beautiful in a 1990s-style navy shift dress and a new necklace Marcus had given her that evening. It was a tiny heart on a delicate gold chain and was something the old her would have thought cheesy. But her fingers were constantly reaching for it and she’d look at Marcus and radiate bliss.
I was just about to head over to her when a short lady in swathes of floaty turquoise approached me, her wrinkled coral lips in a sweet smile. ‘Are you Greta’s daughter?’ she said, wafting Chanel No. 5.
‘Yes,’ I said, plastering on a smile that felt contradictory to my mood. ‘I’m Jess.’
‘What a lovely party,’ she said, taking my hand in both of hers. ‘Your mother told me you pulled this all together by yourself, you clever girl.’
I made ‘oh, it was no big deal’ and ‘yes, they are a happy couple’ kinds of noises while she enthused about the music, the catering, Mum and Dad and told me she was a friend of Mum’s from pottery classes and had heard all about my t
hrilling job in the music industry and my clever schoolteacher boyfriend (obviously someone Mum hadn’t remembered to inform), and ‘Is marriage on the cards, my dear?’ and ‘I know you young people like to leave it all to much later but best be getting on with things, I say’.
‘Now that looks interesting,’ she said as I took a large, very large, swig of my Campari. ‘Where can I get one of those?’
‘From him,’ I said, pointing across the room at Pete.
‘Lovely,’ the turquoise lady replied, then said a multitude of goodbyes and ‘clever girl’s and made a beeline for Pete. I watched with amusement as Pete went to the bar and irately ordered a Campari and soda because it was easier than explaining to a ceaselessly yakking old lady that his waistcoat was maroon and the waiters’ were burgundy.
Still sniggering to myself, I turned and scanned the huge network of friends Mum and Dad had made in the four decades they’d been together, looking again for Annabelle. And with a start I realised Dad must have something like this in Cape Town. The thought hit me like a hurricane. With bricks in it. But I was getting used to these kinds of thoughts. They were a fact. A fact that shocked me in that split second when I first realised it, then became yet another piece of reality I filed in my brain as ‘fucked-up shit that will come out later as cancer’.
‘Do you think any of these people knew about Derek and Magdalena?’ I said, finding my sister and sidling up to her.
‘Nooo,’ Annabelle said, turning around with Katie on her hip and an anguished look on her face. ‘Not the code again.’
‘Do you think people will take sides?’
‘There aren’t any sides to take,’ Annabelle glanced down. ‘Jesus, I can almost see your nipples!’
‘Do you think they will think we’re simpletons for not suspecting anything was up?’ I said, hoisting my neckline up with one hand and trying to bring my Campari to my mouth with the other. It was an awkward manoeuvre that had Campari spilling, Annabelle frowning and me looking like a simpleton.
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