Hadn’t had the courage to examine her own fuckup, more like.
Dumping the rest of the stuff back in its box and shoving the box haphazardly into a corner, she tucked a bundle of old notebooks, each one faded to an age-washed dusty pink, under her arm and headed back to the kitchen.
She took a sip from her half-full glass and nearly gagged. The wine was sour, so she tossed it. Tea it was. She put the kettle back on and settled down to read. Clare wasn’t quite sure when she got up to find a notepad and a pen, or why she decided to copy out the bits that struck her most powerfully.
The pain was as fresh as it had been the day Will had turned his back on her by the duck pond and walked away. But there wasn’t just pain; there was strength too. Where had she found it? Barely eighteen, no longer a girl and not yet quite grown up. Strength enough to defy everyone and have the baby nobody but her wanted. Not even her, not really, not at the start. Clare was surprised and impressed. Could this fierce and feisty girl really have been her? Where was she now? She couldn’t have wandered that far, surely.
Five o’clock. Clare looked up, dazed. How could it be that time already?
It couldn’t be. But the street door had definitely slammed and now she heard the heavy, unmistakable thud of Lou’s Dr. Martens on the stairs. Perhaps things had gone badly and Louisa was home early. Clare’s spirits soared, and then she caught herself. A glance at the clock on the stove confirmed Lou wasn’t early. It was five o’clock. Five minutes past five.
The hours Clare had dreaded from the moment she’d realized she’d had to let Will into Lou’s life had flown. When she had sat down at the kitchen table and opened the first of the notebooks, the ones BW, Before Will, before love, before her dreams of being a writer had been abandoned on a park bench, the clock had said ten past three. And now it said five. Almost two hours had vanished, afternoon dusk turning to darkness outside, her tea growing cold along with the apartment. For some reason the heating hadn’t come on. Again.
Fingers cramping, Clare unwrapped them from her pen and hurriedly scooped up the notebooks and sheets of lined A4 that were now covered with her teacher’s scrawl. She was startled to find she was reluctant to stop, but there was no way Lou was getting hold of this until Clare was good and ready for her to see it. If ever. There was nowhere to hide them in the kitchen that would be safe from Lou’s scavenging, so Clare ran the short distance to her bedroom and shoved them in her chest of drawers under a pile of sweaters.
The front door was opening as she emerged.
“Hello, my love.” She forced herself to sound cheery. As if Lou had simply been out with her friends from school, not her long-lost father. “How did it go?”
“It’s bloody freezing in here.” Lou flicked on the hall light. In her haste to hide her diaries, Clare hadn’t noticed how dark the apartment had grown outside the sanctuary of the kitchen.
“Don’t swear,” she said. It was a reflex action.
Lou was clutching a carrier bag to her chest. Not so much a carrier bag as a gift bag, something much flashier and made from expensive white card, with a twisted cord handle and a logo.
The logo was hidden under Lou’s arm. Intentionally, to judge by its angle.
“What…,” Clare opened her mouth to ask about the bag, then shut it again. On the phone earlier, Will had asked Clare if it was OK for him to give Lou a present. Grudgingly, she had agreed. There was no doubt in Clare’s mind that this—whatever this was—was it.
Clare caught a glimpse of Lou’s scowl under her curtain of hair and suddenly felt nervous. Her daughter’s dark eyes were more impenetrable than ever, her face thunderous.
“What is it?” Clare asked. A wave of nausea surged in her stomach. What had Will done to her baby? “What’s happened?”
“Don’t you dare,” Lou said. There was a new kind of anger in her voice. An anger that Clare couldn’t remember having heard before. It was more grown-up. Frankly, it scared her.
“Don’t speak to me,” Lou said, pushing open her bedroom door. “Not now…” The door slammed behind her. “NOT EVER!”
Twenty-six
He told her?” Eve was horrified. “He wouldn’t do that. He promised.”
“That’s what I thought, but it seems I was wrong. He would and he did. And sadly, he hadn’t promised. I think I just hoped…I believed he wouldn’t, if I even thought about it, and I’m not sure I did. More fool me, eh? It just didn’t occur to me he would do something so…”
“Who? Do what?” Lily asked, flinging herself into a chair beside them. “Sorry to interrupt,” she added when Clare glared at her. Jeezus, her sister knew how to bear a grudge.
“Will,” Clare whispered, “told Lou about the check. He said he tried to give me money when she was born and I sent it back in pieces.”
The three women sat in silence for a moment, taking in the enormity of it.
“I still can’t believe it,” Eve said. “There has to be some mistake.”
“Believe it,” said Clare. “And there’s no mistaking the fact that, right now, Lou hates me. She won’t speak to me, won’t look at me, won’t even stay in the same room as me for longer than it takes to make a sandwich. I thought nothing could be worse than her glowering moodiness of the last fortnight, but this…” Clare dropped her head so the others couldn’t see the tears building.
When she looked up, her eyes were dry.
“Give me the teenage sulks and a bit of harmless door slamming any day of the week.”
“When did she tell you this?” Eve asked. “If she’s not speaking to you?”
Clare’s smile was bleak. “Oh, she found her voice for that long.”
Instead of scowling when Lily put up her hand for permission to speak, Clare simply looked sadder. “I’m not that bad, am I?”
“I was just thinking,” Lily said. “This calls for something stronger. Let’s reconvene to the pub over the road.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Mandy and Melanie?”
“Melanie’s not coming,” Eve said. “And before you say it, no, we’re not chucking her out, she’s got a brilliant excuse, the best. She’s taken Vince to meet her parents…. I know!” she added, seeing Clare and Lily’s shocked expressions. “But let’s save that for later. What about Mandy?”
It was Clare who answered. “She’s on her way. I’ll text her and tell her where to find us.”
Eve and Lily exchanged surprised glances.
“What are you looking so smug about?” Melanie asked Vince as he rolled away from her in response to the beeping of his cell phone. “You’re good, honey. But you’re not that good!”
“Not that good?” He grinned. “Your parents love me. The parents who are impossible to please, I might add. Your brother loves me, you love…”
Melanie saw his confidence waver. “I love you,” she filled in for him.
“And, judging from that, you just had the orgasm of your life. I think a man’s entitled to feel a little smug.” Rolling back, he tweaked her nipple.
“Ouch,” Melanie squealed, shifting as far as the king-sized bed would let her, but she was hamming it up. The truth was, one tiny tweak and she’d felt herself grow wet again.
“Text from Ellie,” Vince said, scrolling down. “She says hi, she hopes Boston is nice, and can she have a purple iPod nano for Christmas.”
“In that order?”
Vince’s mouth twisted. “Not precisely.”
“Oh, well, it makes a change from pink, I suppose.” Scooching up behind him, Melanie slid her legs on either side of his body, her small breasts squashed against his broad back. Idly, she meshed her fingers in his chest hair.
“Don’t,” Vince was texting frantically. “You’re distracting me.”
“You don’t say.” Melanie’s hands crept downwards. “Surely a master of the universe—or at least of the Cheungs of Cambridge, Massachusetts—isn’t so easily distracted?”
The truth was, Melanie still couldn’t believe things had gone so
smoothly with her family. So smoothly it was almost unsettling. For the first time since adolescence, there had been no rows, no bickering, and only a few moments of mild friction.
As mellow as ever, Vince had been like a soothing balm on the prickly heat of years of Cheung family tension. That her brother Pete and his wife had brought their kids for the day had helped dilute the atmosphere as well. Vince and Pete had hit it off instantly, and Melanie had always liked Lucy, his wife. Although she couldn’t for the life of her see how Lucy put up with her younger brother. As for her nephew and niece…
“How did you get so big?” Melanie had shrieked, trying and failing to scoop up Mikey and Mia as they’d tumbled out of the back of their father’s humvee. Last time she’d seen them, they had fitted one under each arm, no problem.
“We grew, Auntie Melanie,” Mikey had said, his face straight. “We didn’t see you for a long time.”
Stick it to me, kid, why don’t you?
“I know,” Melanie had said wryly. “Sorry ’bout that. I’ve been really, really busy. But I’ve missed you tons and I brought you presents to make up for all the ones you didn’t get.”
“Out of the mouths of babes,” Pete had hissed, rolling his eyes. “And you shouldn’t have. They’re spoiled rotten already. You should see the stuff Mom and Dad have already got them for Christmas.”
“It’s OK,” Melanie had hissed back. “By the way, you gotta get rid of that SUV. It’s so uncool.”
Sticking out his tongue, Pete had herded his children into the house. “Whatever! Come see Granny and Grandpops,” he’d said.
“But we saw Granny and Grandpops last week,” Mia had wailed.
Out of the mouths of babes indeed.
“Vince seems like a great guy,” Pete had said later as “the children” had filled the dishwasher, same as it ever was. “So laidback. He’s got Mom and Pop wrapped around his finger. And you know how easy that is to pull off. Like not at all…”
Melanie had grinned. She hadn’t been able to help it. She’d felt…Melanie hadn’t known what she’d felt—happy, she’d supposed. “He is a great guy,” she’d replied. “You know what, bro, I think he really is.”
And Pete had grinned back. “Definitely better than the last one, anyway.”
To say Pete had not taken to Simeon was something of an understatement. Mind you, no one in the family had taken to Simeon. But Melanie’s younger brother usually liked everyone. So his loathing for Simeon should have set alarm bells ringing. The fact that it hadn’t…
Well, her college friends didn’t call her Bull-Headed Mel for nothing. Still, at least Pete hadn’t said he’d told her so. Yet.
“Watch it, kiddo,” she’d said, knuckling his upper arm where she knew it hurt. He’d been right, and she’d known it, and he’d known she’d known it. Vince was definitely better than the last one.
Melanie had been worried about leaving Vince with her parents, but, as it had happened, she needn’t have. Her father had declared him a nice young man (politely ignoring the fact that Vince’s hair was decidedly grayer than his own) and had given him a glass of his best scotch. Even her mother had smiled approvingly and only mentioned David Deng once, to inform Melanie that David’s ultrafertile wife, Ling, had just produced grandchild number four and grandson and heir number three. Such restraint was something of a record by her mother’s standards. Melanie had felt stupidly grateful.
“Who’s David Deng?” Vince had asked when Melanie’s mother had disappeared into the kitchen to embark upon preparations for the third meal of the day. It had been so long since Melanie had spent any time in her parents’ house that she’d forgotten about all the food. She wondered if the clothes she’d packed would even fit by the time they got back to the hotel.
“Melanie’s intended,” Pete had said, ducking from the slap he’d known was coming.
“Pete,” Lucy had said, rolling her eyes. “Give poor Melanie a break.”
“Poor Melanie, my foot,” Pete had said. “She’s had three years of peace.”
“I’ve been in exile,” Melanie had protested.
“Self-imposed,” Pete had shot back. “I, on the other hand, have done every Thanksgiving, birthday, Christmas, Chinese New Year, you name it. You have some making up to do. And, anyway, it’s a statement of fact. That’s who David Deng is.”
“He is not!” Melanie had protested.
“Was!”
“Only in Mother’s dreams.”
Pete had shrugged. “That’s enough,” he’d said.
“The Dengs were family friends when we were growing up,” Melanie had explained to Vince. “David is their eldest son. Good, clean-cut, all-Chinese-American guy. Straight As, stratospheric SATs. Went to Harvard. Mother harbored fantasies about us getting married. The union of the eldest daughter and eldest son of two respectable Boston Chinese families to produce a little Deng-Cheung dynasty. In her head it was a done deal.”
“But Melanie wasn’t having any,” Pete had said. “All hell broke loose when she announced she was dating some guy who stacked shelves at Home Depot!”
“Home Depot?” Vince had been unable to hide his disbelief. He’d never figured Melanie as a girl to hang around boys who worked at B&Q, even as a teenager.
“He had a Harley. I was a junior in high school. What can I say?” Melanie had shrugged. “He was as close as Boston got to Matt Dillon. It was your basic teen rebellion.”
“A teen rebellion that lasted, ooh, twenty years.” Pete’s eyes had slid toward Vince, as if to say, “until now.” Melanie had been grateful her brother hadn’t spoken the words out loud. She had hoped her family would like Vince, but it had never occurred to her that they would like him this much. They had seemed to see him as some sort of return to respectability. But then again—she’d run through the list—he worked in IT, he owned his own company, he’d admitted his savings had grown large enough to cause him concern. Simeon had been different. He’d been too rich, too flash. Vince was solid. It had been an odd realization. She’d never seen Vince as respectable before.
“Anyway,” she’d said, dragging the conversation back to safer territory (as long as her mother hadn’t been in the room). “Who’s to say he was ever interested in me?”
“Ah, come on, Melanie. You were the local babe, everyone knows that. It wasn’t easy being her brother, you know,” he said to Vince.
Melanie had struck up the air violin, but both men had ignored her.
“All these older guys wanted to be my friend and I never knew whether they liked me or just wanted to date my hot big sister!”
“Including David Deng?” Vince had asked.
“He was crazy about her,” Pete had said. “But he didn’t have to bother to go through me. His parents approved, our parents approved, he approved. Everybody approved…”
“Except me,” Melanie had put in. “He was such a geek.”
“A multimillionaire geek now, I think you’ll find,” Pete had said. “And even if he hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have dated him just ’cos Mom and Dad wanted you to.”
Melanie had shrugged. “And you would?”
“Date David Deng? No way!”
“You know what I mean! The point is, Vince…” Melanie had lowered her voice, not only to prevent her parents overhearing but also to keep out of Mikey and Mia’s earshot. “Mom and Dad never really forgave me. Especially Mom. They held out hope I’d see sense, until about ten years back, when he got engaged to Ling. Since then they’ve just been straight out furious that I blew my chances. Blew their chances of a Cheung-Deng dynasty more like.”
“It got really bad,” Pete had said, “about five years ago, when he opened a legal practice in Boston and bought a mansion on Beacon Hill. I thought Mom was going to combust.”
He’d glanced at Melanie, who’d nodded.
“Man, she was furious,” Melanie had said. “Now, not only is David Deng the one that got away, he’s a pillar of the local Chinese community and he’s producing
heirs like they’re going out of fashion.”
“The inference being,” Pete had said, “that if she’d done what they wanted all along, she, too, would have the enormous brood.”
“Yeah,” Melanie’s mouth had twisted. “A whole humvee full of little Cheung-Dengs.”
Her brother had graciously ignored the dig.
“They’ve never let me forget it. Usually when I come home it’s David Deng this, David Deng that, isn’t it?”
Pete had nodded vigorously. “Yeah,” he’d said, and once again his eyes had slid toward Vince. “Family occasions are pretty intolerable when Melanie’s around. And sometimes when she isn’t, if we don’t manage to keep the conversation away from her. Until now, of course.”
“So where were we?” Eve prompted when they were finally ensconced in a corner table in the pub across the street with a bottle of house red. Mandy had joined them ten minutes earlier and had just got back from fighting her way to the bar. She was drinking a Coke for some reason.
“I think my daughter was mid-yell.” Clare downed half the glass Lily had just put in front of her. And Lily raised her eyes when Eve topped it up.
“She came out of her room about an hour later, holding this…gadget I’d never seen before. I innocently asked what it was, and Lou told me it was none of my bloody business. I said don’t swear, and that was it. I walked straight into a knock-down, take-no-prisoners fight. Over fourteen years of being a single mother and I fall for the oldest trick in the book.”
Clare shook her head, as if astonished at her own naiveté.
“Oh, my God,” she said, and her eyes widened. “Lou stuck it to me. Called me a selfish, manipulative bitch. Said her childhood had been crap and it was entirely my fault. That if not for me she’d have had a dad all these years. I’d made us poor, apparently. Because I like being a martyr, when all I’d had to do was let her dad; get that, her dad”—Clare’s fingers mimed inverted commas in the air—“pay his way. As if the CSA have been battering down our door for the last fourteen years and I’ve been sending them away.”
The Other Mothers' Club Page 24