‘Great. Is everyone in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good, can you let everyone know we’ll have the team meeting at 11.30 and the usual buffet lunch will be laid on afterwards about 12.30.’
‘Will do.’ She stood up frowning.
‘What’s wrong, is my hair a mess?’ Kate smoothed it with her hand.
‘You look tired, stress-tired.’
‘I’ll be fine. It is Monday.’
‘True.’ They laughed. Kate wished she didn’t have to brush it off. ‘Can you call Sally in, please? And if you could stay and make notes then update the virtual whiteboard on where we’re up to on the projects for the next week, please?’
‘Yeah, course. Can I get you a coffee?’
‘Please. Make it a big one.’
‘Oh, and something arrived for you by courier.’ She grabbed it from her desk and brought in a cardboard backed envelope addressed to Kate. There was a plain printed label on the front but no return address. It was probably samples from a printers touting for business.
When Jane had gone, she ripped the seal and took out a solitary sun-faded photo. It took a moment to sink in who it was. She peered closer. There he was smiling at the camera, no top on, already tanned, wearing swimming shorts and a straw trilby, lounging on a sandy beach in Spain with her next to him, wearing what had been her favourite red bikini, legs stretched across his, both licking ice-lollies, gazing into each other’s eyes. She remembered the day, the exact moments before this was taken. How could she forget it? Her twenty-two-year-old self had been happy, excited. They’d asked the lovely old ice-cream seller to take their photo and he’d told them what a beautiful couple they were. A little over a year later and their lives together were in tatters. All because of her.
She turned the photo over and read his handwritten message.
DON’T FORGET, THIS WAS US BEFORE YOU RUINED EVERYTHING.
YOU OWE ME!
YOU DESTROYED OUR LIVES TOGETHER AND I WILL DESTROY YOUR PERFECT LIFE IN A HEARTBEAT IF YOU DON’T PAY UP.
She ought to rip it to shreds, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Maybe she should text him. And say what? That she didn’t appreciate being dragged back in time? He knew, which was why he was doing it. She didn’t want to add fuel to his mission.
‘Knock, knock.’ Sally stood at the door.
‘Sorry, miles away. Come in.’ She stuffed the photo and envelope in her bottom drawer.
Sally sat down. Jane brought in their drinks and sat next to her. For the next twenty minutes they ran through all the events they were organising over the coming week and what stage in the planning they were at. It took a surprising amount of manpower to make sure every event ran smoothly for each client. The photo flashed across her mind. The threat that he could bring her down so easily sent shivers through her.
Just as the buffet was being laid out, James arrived. He shut her office door and sat on the other side of her desk.
‘How did it go?’ Kate asked.
‘Good. The Koreans booked the CSI event and we discussed a product launch they want organised in the new year. How’s it going here?’
‘All under control. Jane’s updated the whiteboard if you want to add anything?’
‘I will, thanks. So, how are you feeling?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Are you?’ He shifted to the edge of his seat. ‘Susie called to thank us for dinner and hoped we’re both okay.’
‘Of course we are.’
‘Are we? So explain to me the outburst?’
‘Because you were bloody rude the way you dismissed being Lily’s godparent.’
‘But Susie’s only asking me because… Oh I don’t know. Why is she asking me? She must have known I’d say I wasn’t up to the job.’
‘She told me you left your last girlfriend because you didn’t want kids.’
‘You two were talking about me?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about her?’
‘What for? It was clear we weren’t a good match. Fortunately, I found out in time. Anyway, we wouldn’t have met, would we?’
Kate nodded. Jesus. So if she told him her baby news was he suddenly going to say they weren’t suited?
Her phone buzzed on her desk. She picked it up feeling her face heat up as she read the message.
Get my little present? A reminder to pay up, unless you want me to send a photo to your husband next time?
‘Who’s that?’ James stood up.
‘Nothing important.’ She closed it and tried to slip it in her pocket, but it dropped to the floor. James picked it up and handed it to her. Thank God, the message had cleared from the screen.
‘Are you coming to eat?’
‘I’ll be there in a second, you go ahead.’
What if she transferred a few thousand pounds to him, would it be enough to stop all this? But why should she give in to him? She could take this to the police, tell them he was blackmailing her. But that might backfire, open her up to their questions, although she could always deny his accusations. Was there any proof of what she did? What if that was why he was pursuing her after all this time? She thought she’d managed to run away from her past, but it had come back to haunt her.
Chapter Seven
On Friday afternoon, Kate sat across from her mother at the kitchen table in silence. She closed her laptop, took the cups to the sink and rinsed them while Elizabeth switched the radio on to a blast of The Archers theme tune.
In the dim hall, Kate stopped at the telephone table. Next to a vase of ostrich feathers was the photo of a young Elizabeth with soft tumbling curls as striking as a film star’s. She’d always loved this photo. Noticeably pregnant, Elizabeth stood arm in arm with Kate’s father in Trafalgar Square. They looked startled but were laughing at the cloud of pigeons taking off round them. She looked closer. Her face was already beginning to fill out like her mum’s. She touched her bump and imagined how it would look when it got bigger, her waddling along, glowing and happy. She had grown up thinking how special it was, the three of them together before she was born, but it had all been an illusion.
‘Dad’s stuff is in his wardrobe,’ Elizabeth called after her. ‘I’ll be up in a jiffy.’
Kate plodded up the stairs. The carpet had become threadbare in places. The once shiny brass poles were speckled and tarnished. She could remember kicking each step up to her room, sent there as a punishment for answering her mother back or getting in the way. A mahogany plant stand stood on the half-landing holding her dad’s aspidistra, the once glossy leaves now laden with dust. She could picture him standing there whistling, shirt sleeves neatly rolled up, buffing cloth in hand.
In his bedroom, she could taste dust in the air. Everything was as she remembered it. The heavy brown curtains were drawn, bed made as if he would sleep there that night. On the bedside cabinet, his wire-rimmed glasses rested on a copy of The History of Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding. The new slippers she’d bought for his birthday a month before he died were tucked under the bed. A rush of air howled down the chimney, rustling the grasses in an earthenware vase.
Her mobile pinged in her pocket. She wanted to ignore it. If she didn’t respond, would he give up? She doubted it. Knowing him, something was brewing. She took her mobile out and glanced at the screen.
I’m still waiting…
She switched it to silent and slipped it back in her pocket. From the solid oak wardrobe, she took out an open box. Her dad’s brown trilby from the 1950s lay on top. Next to the other boxes stood his tan leather briefcase. She hoped her mother didn’t intend to throw it out. She’d always thought it was beautiful. Her arms reached round it as she lifted it onto the bed, not letting go. She shut her eyes. The cold leather began to warm against her cheek just the way it used to when she’d curl up with it under his desk as he worked. Oh Dad, I’m sorry I stayed away so long. She should have come and spoken to him sooner. She’d thought about it many times, but after he found out he wasn’t her real dad,
he was different with her. She caught him staring at her once. Perhaps he’d wondered if she looked like her real dad, whoever he was. She hadn’t been certain he would be as willing to forgive her.
She thought back to that final morning. It had been dark, and they were still in their dressing gowns when she dropped a carrier bag full of stuff she didn’t want at her mother’s feet and ran past her up the stairs.
‘Where are you going?’ Her mother’s voice boomed after her.
‘Spain.’ They’d been living together in a bedsit for a month, all loved up, but next they planned to travel round Europe. She knew her parents had hoped she would come home, forgive them, but how could she when she was filled with so much anger and resentment? Her mother had lied to her all her life. It was her chance to make a stand. Show them they couldn’t keep a secret like that and expect life to carry on as normal. Who was her real dad? She’d asked her mother, but she wouldn’t say.
‘Found something of yours?’ Her mother had stood in the doorway, hands on hips, mouth drawn tight like a purse. Kate folded the wad of money and spun round, eyes flashing.
‘That’s mine, put it back,’ Elizabeth shouted, her face pulled up by curlers packed into a hairnet.
‘I’ll pay you back.’ Kate tucked the cash in her jeans without waiting for an answer. They faced each other in silence until Elizabeth’s eyes flickered.
‘When?’
‘Six months, a year, I don’t know. What do you care?’ Kate laughed and pushed past her.
‘You can’t go, I won’t allow it.’ Elizabeth stomped back downstairs, but Kate was already outside in her boyfriend’s camper van. He’d wound the window down, leaned his arm on the frame and grinned at them, triumphant.
‘When are you bringing our daughter back?’ Dad asked, his chin covered in shaving foam.
‘How about never!’ Kate shouted.
‘She’s stolen my savings,’ Elizabeth’s voice sounded alarmed and shrill.
‘You’ll telephone us, Katherine, won’t you?’ Dad called.
‘You’ll pay me back that money with interest, do you hear?’ Elizabeth shoved herself in front of him, hands on hips, a scowl on her face.
Kate had closed the window, glowing in her victory, not realising that she had shut her parents out of her life for what would be the next twenty-five years.
As Kate pushed the box into the middle of the room, she stared into space. There had been several times when she’d considered asking for their help in those difficult first months. But after everything she’d said to them, everything she’d accused them of, she couldn’t bring herself to give in. Before long, the years had stretched out and added up. It seemed there was no way back, until last Christmas, a few weeks after her health scare, when the lump in her breast thankfully turned out to be a cyst and she had decided to send them a card. A reply swiftly arrived from her mother telling her in her usual blunt way that her father was dying. Barely any pleasantries, no chit chat, but it was a start, a way back into their lives.
Everything of her dad’s was precious now. She didn’t want to get rid of any of it. He’d only kept beautiful things. She took everything out, one at a time: work logbooks; a collection of cigarette cards and a small pile of books with gilt-edged pages: Moby Dick, Gulliver’s Travels, The Riddle of the Sands and Oliver Twist. Kate flicked through each of the leather-bound editions. When she came to Oliver Twist, two black and white photos fell out. A picture of a young Elizabeth was dated on the back: May 1973. The other was of a grand-looking old building beyond high gates, possibly a school: June 1955.
She looked closer at the photo of her mother: the pouting lips, soft curled hair and a flower print shift dress. Elizabeth would have been in her early thirties – an aspiring actress – yet Kate detected sadness in her eyes.
‘Where are you?’ Her mother boomed in the voice of a much younger woman.
How could she not have heard the tap of her stick on the stairs? She lay the photos upside down on the box, standing up in time to be greeted by her mother in the doorway.
‘What have you got there?’ She stamped her stick on the wooden floor.
‘Some of Dad’s old books.’
‘Not those, what’s that?’ Her voice was lower now, each word spoken with laser precision.
‘I found a couple of old photos.’
‘Show me.’ She moved forward, pivoting on her stick, her hand outstretched.
Kate picked up the top one. Her mother’s Venus flytrap fingers snapped shut round the corner of the photo. Her sharp intake of breath was barely detectable. Kate pretended she hadn’t heard it.
‘Where did you find this?’ Her mother’s cheeks flushed crimson.
Kate shifted backwards. ‘In the back of one of Dad’s books.’
Her mother took it into her bedroom. Kate picked up the other photo and followed her. Elizabeth put on her reading glasses. She sat on the bed and seemed to slip into a trance, lost in another time.
‘You know this place?’ Kate asked softly.
‘It’s… it’s a school now.’
‘Your school?’
Her mother didn’t answer. She turned the photo face down on the bed and cast her eyes over the lacy handwriting on the back. Her fingers crept over the date.
‘There’s another photo… of you.’ Kate handed it to her.
Her mother took a close look at it. ‘I’d not long found out I was pregnant.’
Her tone made Kate’s heart stall.
‘We married before I started to show.’ For a brief moment, her mother’s face lifted in its practised smile.
‘Didn’t you think about telling Dad the truth?’
‘And have him leave me?’ Elizabeth put a hand to her head as if to comfort a pain.
‘But he had a right to know I wasn’t his.’
‘I was pregnant, unmarried. Do you know how shameful that was?’
‘But you did love him, didn’t you?’
‘Of course I did.’
Kate gave a deep sigh. ‘So tell me, who is my real father?’
‘What does it matter now? I never knew mine.’ Her mother propped herself up against a pile of silk cushions.
‘It matters to me.’ Kate longed to know something, anything about him. Were they similar in any way in looks or personality?
‘There’s not much to tell you. His name was John and he was a local greengrocer.’ Elizabeth pursed her lips and fussed about throwing a shimmering quilt over her legs.
‘Don’t you have a photo of him?’
‘No.’
Kate had always wished she had grandparents to talk to – the stories she’d heard at school from her friends, about how their granddad or nan had taken them on special trips and been given treats like ice-cream sundaes. It had always puzzled her why she didn’t have any relatives on her mother’s side. Her dad’s parents were dead long before she was born.
‘Well there you are. It couldn’t be helped.’ Her mother fanned her hand out round her neck.
‘What couldn’t be helped?’
But her mother unfolded the broadsheet from the bedside table and flapped the pages back and forth until it stood upright, blocking Kate out.
Back in her dad’s bedroom, Kate sat on the floor. A familiar heaviness weighed in her stomach. As a child she’d imagined putting a stone in her mouth and swallowing it each time her mother ignored her, insulted her, or failed to consider her feelings. She’d always been aware that her mother wasn’t the happiest person in the world. The truth was, she’d always had the feeling it was her fault. She remembered her dad saying once that Elizabeth had a difficult start in life and that sometimes she needed to be forgiven for the way she snapped at them and wasn’t ‘as warm as a mother should be’. When Kate was very young, she hadn’t quite understood and suggested they buy her a coat for Christmas. Her dad answered by patting her on the head and making a strange shape with his mouth.
They’d been standing in the larder at the time, while she ser
ved her punishment for stealing a packet of biscuits. Her task was to re-label all the jars by teatime, writing out each word on a square of paper, sticking each label on the corresponding jar with clear tape. She loved the variety of colours, smells and textures of the ingredients: brown sugar, cinnamon, pearl barley and dried kidney beans. The space always seemed to shrink with her father there; it was barely enough room for one person let alone two. She remembered the tiny bobbles of wool on the undersides of his pullover sleeves and the holes unravelling at the elbows, visible only when he lifted the jars down for her. She didn’t let on that she liked the job; it had given her the perfect opportunity to practise her handwriting and she had enjoyed organising the jars into a more logical order.
A loud tapping on the wall brought Kate back to the present. She dragged herself up and back to her mother’s room. Elizabeth sighed as she closed the newspaper, keeping a finger inside to mark her place.
‘You look a bit peaky. Stay for dinner; there’s some leftover beef stew in the fridge. Too much for me.’ A magazine was open next to her, showing a full page black and white photo of Katharine Hepburn in a pair of signature wide-legged trousers. ‘Stay over if you want to.’
‘I think I might, I feel exhausted. I was wondering what you want to do with Dad’s ledgers?’ Each item bought and sold in his auction business over forty years had been carefully listed.
‘Can you burn them?’ She opened the newspaper again, but it flopped forward.
‘Really? It’s his life’s work.’
‘What use are they now?’
‘But Mum…’
‘I don’t want all those things cluttering up the house. What good are they except to remind me of something that’s finished?’
‘Would you mind if I kept them?’
‘What do you want them for?’ Her mother’s throat rattled with laughter. ‘It’s all sentimental memories.’ She brushed Kate away with a sweep of her hand.
Downstairs, Kate sipped a glass of water. Nausea was building again in her throat. Normally she’d be rushing off to meet friends on a Friday night. Always keen to get away. James wasn’t going to be back from York until Saturday evening. What was the point in going out when she felt so sick? Anyway, she ought to help out more. She stared into the yellow light of the near-empty fridge. The smell of stew made her stomach rumble. She pictured herself standing in the same place more than twenty long years ago when all the plastic shelves were brand new. Now they were dull and scratched. She remembered taking out a joint of beef for Sunday dinner: a heavy, bloody lump of meat. It was the first time she had introduced him to her parents. He drank too much wine and told them why everyone should become vegetarian, trying to compensate for the lack of conversation. She could still hear the polite clink of cutlery on her parents’ best china.
A Mother Like You Page 5