Annabelle suddenly spotted Hunter serving himself a Hagrid-sized portion of chocolate cake. ‘I have to go.’ She turned back to me and watched me drain my glass. ‘Go easy on the drinking, OK?’ she said, a wrinkle of concern between her delicate eyebrows. Then she glanced down again and the wrinkle became a furrow. ‘And cover yourself, you look like a page three.’
Annabelle drifted towards Hunter and I stood alone again, contemplating the roomful of people who may or may not have known about my parents’ big lie. Ruth and Bert, our old neighbours, were dancing to ‘Brown Eyed Girl’. Did they ever overhear an incriminating conversation between Mum and Dad as they sat in the garden in the summer sipping gin and tonics? Patrick, the producer at Mum’s radio station, was at the buffet struggling with a pair of tongs. He’d had a relationship with Mum. Did he know about Dad’s other family? And what about Dad’s business partner, standing close by talking to Marcus? Surely he, if anyone, would have had an inkling at least. Every thread of enquiry brought forth a torrent of questions and I had to order another Campari and soda to quiet the noise in my head.
*
At 9 p.m., as I’d scheduled, the band stopped and everybody took their seats to listen to the speeches. I’d decided against giving mine. Prior to my trip I’d been writing it during quiet moments at work. But although every word in it was true: what a great mother Mum had been, a great father Dad had been, and how I wished I would one day have a relationship that made me as happy as they made each other; all those words were attached to a lie. Mum wasn’t emotionally strong enough to give a speech and Annabelle had a deathly fear of public speaking. So that just left Dad. He took to the stage with Mum at his side in her shapeless eco-dress that was probably made out of something Annabelle would have once tried to smoke. Whoops and cheers erupted from the Camparimerry crowd.
‘Here we go,’ I said, standing next to Annabelle behind the kids’ table.
She turned to smile at me but her smiled dropped. ‘Put your bosoms away.’
‘They aren’t bosoms,’ I said, pulling up my dress while Dad started talking about his friends, happy times and getting through tough times. ‘Bosoms are older and get hefted around to Neil Diamond songs. These are tits,’ I said, pointing directly at my cleavage and making Annabelle hiss at me to be quiet. ‘And they want to twerk to Nicki Minaj.’ Dad had moved on to talking about surviving teenagers and stock market crashes. I frowned. ‘Only butts twerk. What do tits do?’
‘How much have you had to drink?’ Annabelle whispered, looking at my half-filled Campari glass.
‘Enough to make me talk about tit-twerking. Not enough to quiet the dramatic stage production of our ridiculous life that’s going on in my head right now.’
Annabelle looked at me blankly.
‘Winona Ryder is playing you. Reality Bites Winona though, you know? With the spiky hair and the 1990s waif look? Not Stranger Things Winona with the screaming and the running and the really ugly coat.’
Annabelle gave me a stern ‘shut-up’ kind of look and I turned my attention to Dad.
‘I’ve made some mistakes in my life,’ he said, getting serious.
‘You don’t say,’ I muttered.
‘Shhh!’ Annabelle whispered.
Dad’s eyes scanned the crowd and stopped when he found us. I stiffened.
‘My life, as I’m sure happens to everyone, has had its ups and downs,’ Dad continued, his voice wavering. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time away . . . working. And as I’ve reached this age, I look back and . . .’ He faltered and reached for Mum’s hand. ‘We’ve got two beautiful girls . . .’
‘Three,’ I whispered to Annabelle, who scowled.
‘. . . whom I’ve had the privilege to watch grow into remarkable young women. And two grandchildren . . .’
‘Four,’ I whispered in her ear again.
Annabelle took my drink off me and handed it to Marcus. ‘Pull your dress up,’ she hissed.
‘. . . who mean the world to me. And if it all ends now,’ he looked at Mum, then out at Annabelle and me. I grabbed Annabelle’s hand and gripped it hard, trying to overcome the desire to flee the room. She wrapped her arm around my waist. ‘Well . . . I wouldn’t have changed anything for the world.’
Mum stood next to Dad with tears trickling down her lightly rouged cheeks and catching in the overhead lights. She seemed so tiny. Dad looked at Mum and I could see the words were stuck in his throat. He appeared to lose his thread. ‘I’m . . . I . . .’ He turned back to the crowd. His hand tightened its grip around Mum’s. ‘I’m just so happy to be here with my family and friends. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? All I know is that I am where I want to be right now. Thank you for being with us on this special night to celebrate love, life . . .’ His gaze fell on Annabelle and me. ‘And family.’
Dad stepped down from the stage as the band took up their positions. Annabelle and I stayed side by side, her dabbing at her moist eyes and me fussing with my neckline.
As the dance floor filled up to the sound of ‘Gloria’, Mum and Dad arrived in front of Annabelle and me.
‘That was a good speech, Dad,’ Annabelle said as she handed Mum a napkin from the kids’ table.
‘Your maths needs some work though,’ I mumbled, making Annabelle smile despite herself.
‘Thank you, Belle-belle,’ Dad said, with a look of relief. ‘And Plum, I have a surprise for you.’
‘Your last surprise sucked,’ I said, smiling to show I meant it light-heartedly. Sort of.
He smiled back then pointed behind me. Holding the neckline of my dress up, I turned around. And in the doorway across the room stood Jimmy, tanned, tall, grinning and filling out a navy suit in an exceptionally attractive manner.
‘H-wh-?’ I managed to stutter.
Dad gave me a kiss on the cheek. ‘Time for a new start for you too.’
Mum laid a bony hand on my arm and whispered in my ear, ‘Go get him, Plum.’
I turned to Annabelle, who was smiling, Marcus’s arm around her shoulders. The dance floor began to fill with lively, Spanish-countryside-cycling, Swiss-mountain-hiking, let’s-book-a-walking-wine-tour-of-Umbria active couples in their seventies. I stayed still, rooted by shock. And Campari consumption. And the fear my dress was going to fall down. Jimmy began to move across the room. There was a moment when he was lost from view in the gambol of dancers and then he was there.
‘You’re – you’re here!?’ I stammered. ‘How? Why?’
He grinned. ‘Because this is where you are.’
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
‘It was so hard to lie to you, sweet girl!’
After kissing Jimmy and getting the most urgent details out of the way: yes, he’d taken the placement; yes, he was here to be with me; and yes, he did like how my dress wasn’t containing my breasts, he said we had to FaceTime Diego immediately because the guilt at lying to me was eating away at his paleo-perfected stomach lining.
‘I felt terrible! I wasn’t sure I could do it!’ Diego said, his face filling half of the screen.
‘I knew you could,’ Ian said.
Diego and Ian, also at a Saturday night party, were cheek to tanned, moisturised cheek in the frame of my phone. Coloured lights reflected off the inky ocean moving gently behind them and samba-like music played in the background.
Annabelle came up and introduced Marcus to Jimmy and while it was just Diego, Ian and me, Ian spoke.
‘I don’t know what you said but after he talked to you Jimmy called Dad.’
‘Two days later he borrowed money from us, took the placement and booked his flights!’ Diego beamed.
‘He and Dad still have a lot of ground to make up but they will get there,’ Ian said. ‘And it’s all down to you.’
I looked over at my own father, dancing with my mum and high-fiving a friend as he jitterbugged past him. ‘Well, I know how that feels.’
Diego smiled. ‘We know you do, sweet girl.’
‘And we’re thinking of you always,’ Ian added.
‘You did that?’ I said to my sister.
She nodded and I threw my arms around her petite shoulders.
‘Careful!’ She laughed, and when I stepped back to Jimmy she checked her necklace was still there.
Marcus and Annabelle gave each other ‘let’s leave these two alone’ glances then left, and I felt so happy that my sister had found someone to have those silent, knowing exchanges with.
‘Come here,’ I said, dragging Jimmy by the sleeve, intending on leading him to a darkened corner and planting my lips on his.
‘Hi.’ Pete suddenly appeared in front of us with a look on his face that meant something was just dawning on him.
‘You remember Pete?’ I said to Jimmy.
‘Yes, of course,’ Jimmy said, extending his hand and smiling. ‘Hi, mate.’
‘Yeah, hi,’ Pete said, pumping his hand up and down, his face a plethora of unanswered questions. He flicked his eyes from Jimmy to me.
‘And this is Giselle,’ I said, indicating the vision of perfection arriving next to Pete.
‘Nice to meet you,’ Jimmy said, shaking Giselle’s hand. He shot Pete a look, which made Pete wither with shame.
Jimmy noticed a passing waiter then looked pointedly at Pete’s outfit.
‘Can I get a margarita?’ he chuckled.
Pete reddened. ‘It’s actually quite a different colour, this is maroon and that’s, well, theirs is more burgundy but, you know.’ He gave a stiff shrug. ‘Ha, ha. I get it.’
A couple of older ladies walked past on their way to the bar. ‘Hello, ladies, you look lovely tonight,’ Jimmy said. The women tittered and called Jimmy wicked. ‘This man,’ Jimmy pointed to Pete, ‘makes a mean Alabama Slammer.’
Pete stormed off followed by Giselle and a gaggle of Alabama Slammer grandmas.
I laughed and Jimmy pulled me towards him. ‘I missed you,’ he said, leaning down, his lips close to mine. ‘So much.’
‘I missed you too,’ I said, and drew him into a kiss that made the rest of the room disappear.
A couple of hours later, as the band neared the end of their set, Jimmy took Hunter on stage to watch the musicians close up and I stood at the edge of the dance floor watching Mum and Dad swaying cheek to cheek to Van Morrison’s ‘Bring It On Home to Me’. They looked like a happy couple heading into their twilight years with boozy brunches, trips to southern France and brochures of retirement homes made to look like land-bound cruises. But all was not as it appeared. And only Annabelle and I knew it. Dad had to confess to his other family in Cape Town and Mum had an unknown future. I would never really know what it must have felt like for them. For her to have made this decision to love someone who would never fully be hers. For him to have to split his heart and his time. But they weren’t my decisions to understand. I didn’t know how the future was going to play out. Would my mother cope without Dad? How often would I see my father? Would I be allowed to visit him? To call him? Would I be allowed to invite him for Christmas? How could these questions be part of my life? How could I even be contemplating the access I’d have to my own father?
I felt a slim arm slip around my waist.
‘It’s going to be all right, you know,’ Annabelle said in my ear.
We stood side by side watching our parents. A tear trickled down my cheek and Annabelle wiped it away with a delicate thumb.
‘It’ll never be the same again,’ I said.
‘Who said life is supposed to always be the same?’
I smiled at my sister. ‘Yeah.’
The song finished and the band started playing ‘Moondance’.
‘MAMA!’
Annabelle and I turned to see Katie in Marcus’s arms signing and calling out, ‘MAMA DANCE!’
She looked at me.
‘Go, dance,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’
She hugged me, adjusted my neckline then skipped over to Marcus and took Katie in her arms. Although Marcus was as stable as they come and Annabelle seemed very happy, I knew I would probably never stop worrying about her. You may cease with the destructive consumables but do you ever lose that wild aspect of your personality? Annabelle felt my gaze and looked up. She seemed to know my thoughts and her face softened and her smile said all I needed to know. It was going to be OK.
‘Hey!’ Jimmy said, arriving at my side with a margarita. ‘Doing all right?’
I watched Dad looking adoringly at Mum while she attempted a very rigid kind of swing dance. I looked at Annabelle holding Katie and laughing at Marcus who was dancing with Hunter on his feet. I looked at Pete explaining the difference between burgundy and maroon to a confused elderly lady from Mum’s weaving group. Then I turned back to Jimmy, with his white shirt open to reveal a triangle of tanned chest and his face in a perpetual smile.
‘Yep,’ I said, and took the margarita out of his hands, dragged him across the room and joined my sister and her kids and her boyfriend on the dance floor.
EPILOGUE
ONE YEAR LATER
‘You big bloody rock; you didn’t get the better of me! I’m showing you. I’m showing you right now! Take that you hunk of—’
‘Are you talking to yourself?’ Jimmy said between great gasps of air.
‘Nope,’ I said, heaving in another breath. ‘I’m talking to Mr Thinks He’s So Big and Fancy Table Mountain.’
‘I always thought Table Mountain was a girl,’ Jimmy panted. ‘They call Cape Town the Mother City, so her mountain is probably a girl.’
‘Shhh, I’m concentrating on climbing this bitch or bastard.’
After sixty-seven minutes of climbing upwards in roasting heat I scaled the final few rocks, reached the summit and spun around to watch Jimmy claw himself over the last rock, his T-shirt removed and tucked into the waistband of his shorts (thank you Cape Town for being so hot).
‘I made it! I made it! I made it!’ I bounced from one rock to the other, ignoring the bemused looks from other climbers collapsing on rocks and gasping for breath like spent marathon runners. ‘I made it and I didn’t die of snake!’
‘Where do you get the energy to leap about like a flea after a climb like that?’ Jimmy flumped on a rock in the shade of a scrubby bush and necked a bottle of water.
‘I fricking made it!’ I said, springing over to him. ‘I want to take a photo.’ I held up my phone in selfie position. ‘Get up.’
‘Shall we wait for the others?’ Jimmy said, hefting himself off his rock and standing next to me in the sun.
‘I want one of you and me. The winners.’
‘Your lack of humbleness is grossly unattractive.’ Jimmy pressed his sweaty cheek to mine and we beamed at the camera.
I checked the photo with a grimace. ‘I look disgusting,’ I said, and I was being kind to myself.
We took a series of photos, all beetroot red with hair a-fluff, and all equally horrible. While Jimmy collapsed back on his shady rock I sent one off to Pete with the caption ‘Told you I’d climb it!’ He sent a text back immediately saying, ‘I’m glad. You look happy.’ And then followed it with a picture of Giselle and her teeny-tiny baby bump that they were annoyingly calling Poppy Seed because it was a girl and would most likely come out with French braids. I said ‘Awwww’ then pressed delete with a little scowl that made Jimmy laugh. I slipped the phone into my pocket just as Mum’s German complaining sounded from behind a rock.
‘Nie und nimmer . . . wer klettert den auf so einen berg? Das ist doch folter! Verdammte scheisse, sind wir endlich da?!’
‘Don’t swear, Grandma!’ Hunter’s voice echoed through the opening in the rocks.
I skipped across the dusty ground and peered down the rocky path that was more like a rocky ladder and saw Mum’s clammy, pained face followed by
a tomato-red Annabelle, a determined Hunter and Marcus taking up the rear in a cricket hat and chino shorts, his pale legs thickly plastered with factor fifty.
‘I won! I won! I won!’ I proclaimed as I pulled Mum up the last few steps by her hand.
‘Of course you did,’ Mum puffed and wheezed. ‘I’m seventy-one.’
‘And you left while we were still getting out of the car,’ Annabelle said as she put one dainty foot in front of the other and reached the top.
She turned and helped Hunter scramble over the final rock, followed by Marcus, his pasty skin sizzling like pork crackling, and I did the little winning routine with them too. Nobody gave a crap.
We drained our drink bottles, took a million commemorative selfies then commenced the walk across the top of the behemoth towards the cable car that would take us back down.
Jimmy sent Ian a text saying we were on our way back and received a photo in return of Diego and Katie sitting amid the mountain of toys they’d bought in preparation for our stay.
The cable car descended and blew a cool breeze through the open windows. Annabelle told Hunter not to lean so far out and Marcus, turning a sickly shade of green, looked like he might suffer from motion sickness. I watched Mum at the open window of the cable car, Jimmy next to her pointing out landmarks, and thought of how far we’d all come since that difficult time a year ago.
After the party Mum and Dad told a few close friends everything and asked them to discreetly tell others. I can only imagine how busy the phone lines must have been in the ensuing days. Like us, our friends had struggled to deal with the truth. They too had been lied to for a very long time. Most were supportive. A handful took moral umbrage and sent sternly worded letters before cutting contact, but on the whole people had been sympathetic. And we’d got through the worst of it. As a family. Like Dad had said we would. Albeit a broken one.
Annabelle and I still saw Dad when he came to London, but one of his wife’s stipulations if they were to remain together was that he didn’t see Mum. Ever. The loss I’d felt when realising the four of us might never be in the same room again was like a death. And Mum’s grief was awful to witness. The worst part was removing Dad’s belongings from the family home like he no longer existed. Or we no longer wanted him around. I was angry at first and hated Annika for breaking up our family. But like Ian had said about Jimmy and his dad: ‘a knee-jerk reaction is understandable. It just needs to be readdressed’, I realised that her reaction was probably perfectly justified. But I hoped that in time she would see that we were a family also and ‘readdress’ the decision. So, for now, we saw our parents separately. We hadn’t had any big events like births or weddings but I didn’t think Annabelle and Marcus were far off wanting to and I knew she would never get married without both Mum and Dad there.
Make or Break Page 35