by Paul Ilett
“Dad, we weren’t supposed to bring our phones,” Sam said, gasping the words through a breathless panic.
“I didn’t bring a phone. That wanker has obviously planted one at the table. Now see where it’s coming from!”
Aware that everyone could now see and hear them, Sam and Oonagh began to check the area around them. Sam rummaged through his jacket pockets, his fear getting the better of him and he found himself wishing the phone call on Estelle. He wished and wished and wished that all those stories about her were true and that his father had either knowingly or unknowingly married a transsexual. Pre-op, post-op or in-between, Sam didn’t care. At that moment in time, he just didn’t want his own secret to be splashed all over the news. “Please make it Estelle, please make it Estelle” he thought to himself. And then he looked up, and realised everyone at the table was glaring at him, especially Estelle.
“You were saying that out loud, Sam,” Oonagh whispered to him, a crossness in her voice he hadn’t heard before.
“Oh,” he said, sheepishly. And then he smiled at his stepmother. “Sorry.”
“Estelle, you need to check your bag too,” Oonagh said, trying to remain practical and in control amid the insanity that was playing out around her.
Estelle rolled her eyes as though she no longer expected anything from any of the Harvey family, not even a small measure of loyalty or support, and dumped her handbag onto the table.
“Please please please let it be her,” Sam thought to himself, keeping his lips tightly closed so as not to repeat his unfortunate faux pas. And for a moment time seemed to slow down around him. Everyone at the table paused, and there was a sudden hush across the auditorium as Estelle gently slipped her long fingers and bejewelled nails over the gold clasp and clicked her bag open. Sam waited, heart pounding, for the sound of the ringtone to get louder. He waited for Estelle to reach into her bag, for the sullen expression on her face to change to one of shock as she found the planted mobile phone and realised the final call was, indeed, for her. But the sound of the ringtone remained muffled. Estelle briefly looked through her bag but quickly clicked it closed again. “It’s not me,” she said, smugly. She then sat back with folded arms and watched with an air of amusement to see how things would now play out.
There were gasps from the audience and a few disappointed groans. Sam glanced across the table, bewildered by what had just happened. “How the hell could it not be Estelle?” he thought to himself, lips still tightly sealed. “There’s no one else.”
“Howard?” Oonagh asked.
“Nothing.”
“Sam?”
He checked and then checked again. There was nothing. The phone wasn’t on him. The call wasn’t for him. He immediately felt his panic begin to subside as he realised someone else’s secret was about to be revealed. “No, not me. Oh God, it’s not on me.”
“And it’s not Estelle,” Oonagh said. “And it’s not me.”
There were only two other people at the table, Felicity and Audrey, but Felicity had already stepped away from the group and was keeping herself out of sight of the cameras, trying to merge into the crowd around them. Oonagh didn’t think badly of the girl for that. This wasn’t her drama and it wasn’t fair for her to be involved. Besides, the sound of the ringtone was clearly coming from the other side of the table. From the general whereabouts of Audrey, the one person Oonagh had discounted from the outset. If truth be told, no one had considered the possibility that Audrey would get the final call, not even Audrey herself. Oonagh leaned onto the table and smiled kindly at her. “Audrey, dear, can you please check your handbag?”
Audrey’s face dropped, not only because she was shocked at Oonagh’s request but because she hadn’t expected to be involved in the conversation at all. “I beg your pardon?” she asked, curtly. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Audrey, there’s only you left. Please, check your handbag,” Oonagh said again.
Audrey looked around her at her family and, beyond them, a thousand strangers all staring at her, suddenly the most famous person in the country. Beyond them, on the stage, was Adam Jaymes silently and patiently waiting with his mobile phone still held to his ear. And on the screen behind him she saw herself, the camera now isolating her from the rest of the family. Nervously and gently, Audrey reached to the floor and collected her clutch bag. She rested it onto her lap and could immediately feel the hateful vibration of a mobile phone pulsating through the sparkling brown fabric. “Oh dear Lord,” she gasped quietly, keeping her eyes down so as not to have to look at all of those enthralled and delighted expressions, a thousand people captivated by her public humiliation. As she opened her bag the phone was the first thing she could see, an alien object in her perfectly organised world. It was lit up with Adam Jaymes’ name on the screen, the incoming call. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I haven’t done a thing. Not a single thing.”
And then, without a hint of shame, Howard took Audrey’s hand and kissed her firmly on the cheek. “Whatever,” he said, “just answer the bloody thing. We’ll deal with it, whatever it is.”
“Mum, Mum, it’s fine,” Sam said, filled with grief and shame that he had somehow wished this away from himself and onto his beloved mother. “We’re all here. It’s fine.”
Audrey took a deep breath, looked Adam Jaymes directly in the face and answered the phone. “This is Audrey,” she said, solemnly.
“Hello Audrey Harvey, this is Adam Jaymes. I just called to let you know it’s your turn.”
As his perfect diction boomed throughout the venue, there were a few more gasps from the audience at the unexpected turn of events. Audrey’s public profile had always been slight, certainly nothing compared with the juggernaut of publicity that heralded the arrival of Estelle into Howard’s life all those years earlier. If anything, the crowd seemed a little deflated.
With that Adam ended the call, turned to his left and walked into the wings. There was a brief hiatus as everyone waited for something to happen next – a burst of theme tune or perhaps for the host to return. But there was no one. The show wasn’t on the stage anymore; it was in the audience, at the Harvey table.
“Mum, what was it?” Sam asked, trying his best to keep his voice down. “Anything?”
Audrey placed the mobile phone onto the table and glanced up, staring her son in the face. “There’s nothing,” she said, honestly. “What can there be? I’ve done nothing.”
“Anything, Audrey. Think. Anything at all?” Oonagh demanded.
But Audrey was at a loss. Her mind was racing through what she considered to have been a blameless life, and she could not think of a single misdemeanour that would justify Adam’s final call.
“Don’t worry,” Estelle said, and leaned back towards the table. “It looks like your questions are going to be answered for you.” She nodded towards the giant screen, the backdrop to the entire event, which had begun to shimmer and change. There were whoops of excitement and laughter from the audience as a giant line of animated sparkles swept across the screen, replacing the close-up of Audrey with the Project Ear website. All heads turned to the stage, as the front page headline flashed into view.
DNA Exclusive: Heir Apparent-ly Not!
Under the headline, in a row, were individual pictures. Head-and-shoulder shots of Audrey, Howard and Sam. But there was also a fourth picture, a silhouette of a man’s profile with a big red question mark superimposed over the image. At first, the headline didn’t make sense to anyone at the Harvey table, a glib play on words that didn’t appear to have any connection to them. And the pictures below, of the Harveys and their son with the mystery fourth person, made even less sense. There was a quiet rumble of conversation from across the venue, a few gasps and more laughter. It seemed other guests had started to cotton on, but the Harveys themselves remained in the dark.
“What the fuck?” Howard bellowed, no longer able to control his frustration and caring little for how he might be perceived by the giggling, p
ointing masses around him. “What the hell does that mean? Audrey, tell me what the fuck that means!”
“I ... I just don’t know,” she cried back at him and then glanced across the table at her son, hoping he would offer a reassuring smile or supportive comment. But instead he just looked at her with an expression of horror as though she had committed the most treacherous act a mother could possibly commit.
“Mum,” he said, his eyes wide with fright as he began to consider what the exposé might be about. “Mum?”
“I don’t know what I’m being accused of. Of course it’s not true. I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done. What am I supposed to have done?”
Sam took a deep breath and as the thousand people around him suddenly fell silent, he asked, “Is Howard not my father?”
Confused and humiliated, Audrey stared at Sam and tried to understand what he was asking her. There had never been any shadow of a doubt that Sam was a Harvey, that Howard was his father. She couldn’t even begin to comprehend why he was asking such a disgraceful question, why there were suddenly any misgivings. But amid the awful and oppressive silence that filled the enormous hall, Audrey’s shock and panic subsided and the final piece of the puzzle slotted into place. A memory long and shamefully forgotten, a momentary lapse of judgement that flashed before her eyes, the most terrible of betrayals suddenly exposed for the world to see. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
Her 30th birthday. A sunny afternoon in the garden, reading a book. Lonely, too many glasses of Chardonnay. An unexpected visit from a handsome boy, delivering apologetic presents from her absent husband. The boy, polite and eager to please; one of Howard’s chosen few, someone he has plans for. He stays for a glass of wine. Talking, jokes, unexpectedly clever and witty. Compliments and then flirting. He sunbathes, his shirt off. She offers him sun cream, smoothes it onto his muscular back. He turns to face her. “Can you do my front?” Amazing chest, muscles on his arms. Not a boy. A handsome young man. Dimples and a square jaw. Bright blue eyes. A deep voice, a man’s laugh. Thick wavy hair. He walks Audrey to the kitchen, lays her on the table. Kissing, pushing. He’s naked. Surprise at the sight of him, of his size. He removes her clothes. Kissing, panting. She takes him upstairs and pulls him onto the bed, on top of her. She holds him, feels him inside. His energy, stamina. His passion. How lovely that he wants her.
“It never occurred to me, not once,” she said softly, looking at the floor in shame. “I never thought for a moment you were anyone but Howard’s. I would never have lied to you. To either of you.”
A thousand people vanished into thin air. The TV cameras and studio staff faded into the background. In that moment, none of it mattered. Audrey’s entire life fell to pieces, right there and then, in front of her son and her ex-husband. “Audrey,” Howard growled, in no mood for kindness or sympathy. “Who the fuck is he?”
“Howard!” Oonagh snapped, still very much aware of what was going on around them. “None of that here. We need to leave.”
“WHO THE FUCK IS HE?” Howard shouted, half through anger and half through a need to show Oonagh he wouldn’t be told what to do.
Audrey couldn’t answer, too ashamed to look up and too frightened to speak.
Estelle stood up, a glass of champagne in her hand, and nodded towards the screen. “I think we’re about to find out, sweetheart,” she said, smugly, as the graphics shimmered once more and the mystery silhouette was replaced with a photograph of a man’s face.
Four hundred miles north in a hotel lounge in Edinburgh, a crowd of business travellers watched in a shocked silence as a familiar face appeared on the large wall-mounted TV. It was the man sitting behind them at the bar, the man who’d recently had a glass of wine thrown over him. “Oh my God, that’s you,” the barman said. But Colin Merroney didn’t reply. He was frozen with his eyes wide and his mouth open. He sat oblivious to the excited crowd around him, because in his mind he was reliving a moment from his youth; an eager 17-year-old charming an attractive, lonely rich woman into bed. It was an exciting memory that had always existed in perfect isolation, never shared or set into any other context beyond what it had meant to him: the moment he had lost his virginity. But Adam Jaymes had somehow, impossibly, set that happy memory into an entirely new context. Suddenly there were repercussions and Colin realised that, in a single day, he had become a father twice over.
Soon the phones were out, two dozen mobile devices taking pictures and videos and tweeting and texting. And unbeknown to Colin and everyone else in the room, one of those swiftly taken photographs would soon become world famous; a man sitting at a bar with a glass of white wine in his hand, his face frozen with an expression of absolute panic and shock. At some point the following day, some clever dick would add the caption ‘What do you mean I’m the father?’ and for years afterwards the image was reused and recycled whenever there was unexpected news that needed to be ridiculed. Colin would lose his label as the ‘Kiss-and-Tell King’ and be forever recognised as the ‘What do you mean?’ guy instead.
“Are you having a laugh?” Sam gasped, looking at Colin’s image on the big screen. He turned to his mother, who had managed to lift her head and was staring at him with tears streaming down her face.
“Please, please, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” She turned to Howard, trying to find someone who would embrace her, let her hide her face in their shoulder. But Howard had already stepped away from her and was back next to Estelle, who had decided to show her husband some support in his moment of need and had linked his arm through her muscular own.
“All these years, all these fucking years you let me think he was my son,” he said, spitting through gritted teeth and angrily jabbing his finger through the air in Sam’s direction.
“He is your son,” Audrey replied, yelling the words by accident.
“No, he is not. I don’t have a son,” he said.
“Dad!” Sam wailed, a lost and frightened little boy. “Dad, don’t say that.”
But Howard just looked at him as though he were a stranger. Then he muttered, “Come on,” to Estelle and turned his back on the table. The two walked away, Howard pushing angrily through the crowd and swearing at anyone who didn’t move out of his way quickly enough.
“Howard, no!” Audrey begged, but he carried on walking. “Howard!” she wailed, an appeal for one last chance to speak with him, to convince him not to turn his back on their son or on her. But Howard marched away with no interest in the people he was leaving behind at the table. Just before they disappeared from view, Estelle glanced back, but her expression was one of despair, not victory: a wife who knew her husband’s sudden need for an heir was greater than his need for her.
Audrey was left alone, quietly sobbing with a thousand people watching as her bewildered son failed to console her, too lost to know what he should do next. Oonagh took his hand and whispered into his ear. “Go to your mother,” she said. “Whatever else has happened, she’s your mum and she’s just lost everything. She needs you now more than ever.” She nudged him forward and as he automatically opened his arms, Audrey fell into his embrace and cried. Around them, there was a chorus of “aaahhh!” and the audience applauded as though satisfied by the conclusion of a short play.
Many were frustrated that beyond their memories they would have no personal record of these events. They would have no photobomb for Facebook and no selfie for Instagram. All they would have is an after-dinner story, a tale of how they stood just metres away from the great Harvey family as Adam Jaymes finally and completely destroyed them.
But amid the thousand different versions of the story, there would be one detail that would be missing from them all. A relatively small detail but one that, if noticed, could have revealed a great truth: a young black girl in a grey silk dress, standing just to the edge of the Harvey table with her arms folded. And the slightest hint of a smile on her beautiful face.
EPILOGUE
I knew I would have to write you this letter soone
r or later. I’ve been putting it off, to be honest. Sorry. But I’ve a lot to tell you and I know you really won’t approve. I guess that’s why this letter feels more like a confession. I’ve done so many things that are the exact opposite of what you would want me to do. I put everything on the line. I risked my privacy, my secret life away from the glare of publicity. The one thing you fought so hard to ensure I had. And worse than that, I let Uncle Adam risk his whole career, everything he’s worked so hard to achieve. He did that just to protect me and keep me safe, because he knew he couldn’t stop me or talk me out of it. He knew this was something I had to do, that it’s been eating me up since I was a girl, since the day you died.
I was eight-years-old when I was taken into foster care. You told me it wasn’t going to be for long, that you just needed some time to get better and then I could come home. And I believed that, completely. That promise was all I had because I wasn’t allowed to see you or even speak to you on the phone. The one thing I had to cling to was the knowledge that I’d be home soon. But then my social worker kept making decisions about my life that seemed permanent, and I got so angry with her because I knew I should only be in foster care for a few weeks.
She moved me so far away that I had to change schools, and I kept telling her it wasn’t fair as I would have loads of lessons to catch up on when I went back to my proper school. Then she told me I needed to make new friends, but I told her I didn’t want to because I had plenty of friends at home. And then she told me I needed to decorate my bedroom, to make it feel like it was mine. But I told her it wasn’t my bedroom. My bedroom was at home. I didn’t care what colour the walls of this other stupid room were painted because I wouldn’t be there for long. And every day I’d skip home from school expecting my social worker to greet me, with my bags already packed and her car parked outside, engine running. In my heart, I was only ever a day away from coming home. But then two years went by. That’s a lifetime for a little girl. Two whole years went by and I hadn’t seen you or spoken to you but I still absolutely expected to come home.