The Stranger In My Home: I thought she was my daughter. I was wrong.

by Parks, Adele

  A quick glance in my mirror, and I see Jan Bonville, the Chair of the Parent Association, glare at me. I get out of the car, glad that Katherine is long gone and not around to witness my gaffe, although I’m sure she’ll hear of it, because gossip spreads like wildfire in this school. In a chichi school in the Home Counties, no one carries a knife, so people feast on this sort of blether.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say immediately. Apologies fall from me like leaves from a tree on a gusty autumnal day. I eternally feel as though I’m in the wrong, and I’m sorry for it. Jan is a petite woman, slim, short, neat. She has English-rose looks, skin that shuns make-up, a tidy dark bob and sharp, hard eyes. Her smile never reaches them. I quickly assess the damage. There is none, save for a small scratch on Jan’s car, something I don’t doubt will polish out.

  ‘I’ll have to take your insurance details,’ she barks.

  ‘Of course,’ I agree. Then, in a tardy attempt to gather my wits, I stutter, ‘Really? I mean, will this need to go through insurance? I’m happy to pay for any damage. We don’t want to push up our premiums.’

  ‘I like everything to be above board.’ Her tone is horrified, as though I’ve just suggested some major-league fraud.

  ‘Obviously, yes. Me too. But.’ The mothers in the cars queuing behind Jan’s are going ballistic. There is a veritable symphony of horn blowing and beeping.

  ‘Give me your name and number,’ insists Jan.

  ‘Well, you know my name.’ We’ve served on the same committee for two years now. True, I’m only a lowly class rep and she is the lofty Chair, but she must know my name. All those cakes I’ve baked, all those raffle tickets I’ve sold; last summer I dressed up in a zebra onesie for the school fete and let children throw wet sponges at me. It must mean something. Jan stares at me; her expression is stuck between vacant disdain and severe irritation.

  ‘Alison Mitchell,’ I admit.

  ‘Spelt?’

  ‘The usual way,’ I sigh in disbelief. More glaring, more honking. I capitulate. ‘A. L. I. S. O …’

  As I drive away – red-faced, sweat dripping down my back, humiliation seeping from my every pore – I wonder a few things about myself. One, why didn’t I tell her that the fault is always with the person who bumps into the car in front? And, two, why did I use my lovely suede gloves which Jeff bought me just last weekend to rub away at the scratch? While this action did prove that there was no damage, it ruined the gloves because her car was so filthy. These questions go unanswered. Severe self-introspection is something I avoid.

  I don’t think Jeff notices that I’m late home from the school drop-off. His office door is closed, which tells me, emphatically, that he doesn’t want to be disturbed. There have to be rules and a certain amount of discipline about such things if someone works from home. Jeff has written four novels so far. The last one was a huge hit. Enormous. Over a million copies sold in the UK alone, it has already been published in seventeen different languages, and counting, and someone in Hollywood has optioned the film rights. That was nearly two years ago. Jeff has written three thousand words of novel number five. He is playing with the idea of writing a high-brow literary novel, the novel he describes as the one he has always wanted to write. When he says this to his agent, Sue, she nods sympathetically, says he must write whatever he wants, but then reminds him of the healthy advance that was paid to him on the understanding that he was writing another commercial novel. Sue also reminds him of the importance of timely deliveries; his signature advance can’t last for ever. Two months ago he announced that he is, officially, suffering from writer’s block, something I don’t really believe in. I mean, don’t nurses, teachers and lifeguards have off-days where they can’t be bothered – but they have to bother, don’t they? Because who has ever heard of nurse’s block? I keep that view to myself; Jeff would only sigh and say that I simply don’t understand the creative process.

  I’ll take him a coffee at eleven and tell him all about the school-gate farce then. I know he’ll say I’m silly to worry so much about everything. And he’d be right; I annoy myself at times. I wish I could be more confident. Jeff would’ve told Jan Bonville to take a flying jump, only he wouldn’t have said it so graciously; he’d have used the sort of language that causes sailors to blush. He’s quite a surprise that way. On the whole, he ambles through life with an air of cordial vagueness, but he doesn’t take any twaddle from anyone. He’s firmly polite but, if he has to sacrifice one attribute, he lets the politeness go. I wish I could be so brave and true to myself. I wasn’t always this slightly posh, slightly frail, slightly hopeless sort. This is entirely of my invention, which makes it worse. I was once quite outspoken and opinionated. When did I stop being real? Stop saying what I was thinking? I certainly can’t remember a distinct moment which dramatically brought that part of my personality to a halt. It was a gradual thing. I was one thing, and then I eroded into another. I decided to self-censor. I do know that my transformation from bolshie council-estate Scouse teen rebel to the epitome of respectability, living in the Home Counties, was complete by the time I was thirty-six years old, about the time Katherine started school. By then, I really understood what I had to lose. Not only did I stop saying what I was thinking, I stopped thinking. It was just easier.

  I know that I need to do something productive quickly to counter the Jan Bonville effect. She’s flung me into this pit of self-doubt and insecurity. I check the gym timetable to see if there’s an exercise class I can bob along to but I seem to have just missed the starts. I’m most tempted to Skype my best friend, Rachel, who five (long) months ago moved to Montreal. The problem is, although it’s 9.45 a.m. in my world, it’s only 4.45 a.m. in hers, which isn’t a civilised time to call, even if we have known one another since antenatal classes. I don’t think she’d thank me. Rachel left in a flurry of promises that we’d have regular Skype sessions; we said that we’d be just as close as we were when she lived only half an hour away. It hasn’t been the case. By the time she gets her kids off to school and is ready to call me I’m on my way out of the door to pick up Katherine. The weekends are no more convenient, we’re both absorbed in family life; she has four children aged between fifteen and three and describes herself as a professional chauffeur. I understand: even with just one child, our weekends are quite full on. This weekend just gone, for instance, there was a drinks do with the class parents on Friday evening, Katherine had lacrosse training on Saturday and a game on Sunday. I promise myself I’ll send Rachel a long email tonight, giving her all our news and asking for all of hers. I know she’ll see the funny side to Jan Bonville’s schoolground terrorism. I miss her healing humour. There’s a best-friend-shaped gap in my life right now. Part of me wishes that Rachel’s husband hadn’t landed a great job in Canada, but I accept that it is what it is. Friends have to be pleased for one another when good things happen for them. Don’t they? Because, you know, otherwise, we’d be enemies.

  I settle on a significantly less fun mode of distraction: housework. I unstack and stack the dishwasher and put a load in the washing machine and another in the drier. I try not to feel guilty about the electricity. We do have solar panels. Jeff had them put in because he found my habit of wandering around the house unplugging everything and turning off lights the moment anyone left a room annoying; he says the panels will have paid for themselves by 2050. I wipe clean all the kitchen surfaces and whizz through the house, tidying. We’re not a particularly untidy family but nor are we camera ready at all times. Jeff’s office is shambolic, as is Katherine’s bedroom, although shared space tends to remain reasonably organized, as I stay on top of things. Unlike many of Jeff’s colleagues and the other school mums, we don’t have a cleaner. I am a stay-at-home mum; it doesn’t make sense to pay someone to do what I can easily manage. Besides, I can be careful to time my pottering about with a vacuum cleaner so that it doesn’t have a detrimental effect on Jeff’s concentration, not something I could easily explain to paid help without sounding very
affected. I do any potentially noisy work in snatches, when he nips out for a coffee or to buy a paper, when he goes to the loo. That’s more time than you might imagine.

  What next? I have a ‘To do’ list as long as my arm. Every woman is familiar with the list: it’s full of the sorts of thing that should be done at some point but quite simply aren’t. The ironing is always on the list, never gets crossed off, even though I iron every Thursday morning. Then there’s taking old clothes to Oxfam, cleaning the fridge, tidying up the airing cupboard.

  The doorbell rings and I feel a tiny flutter of excitement. A delivery. Just the distraction I need.

  3

  I start to scan my mind to recall what I’ve sent for recently. I’m expecting fabric samples, because I’m thinking of re-covering the sofa, and Jeff is always ordering out-of-print editions of books from obscure second-hand bookshops. Unlike me, he doesn’t have a ‘To do’ list, he has a ‘To read’ list and spends an enormous amount of time relentlessly tracking down incomprehensible, fascinating titles. He’s very impressive. Most likely, it’s something for him, but I’m holding out the hope that it’s the samples so I rush to the door before the post lady rings the bell a second time. I fling it open but, instead of the weather-beaten, smiley postie, I’m faced with a lean, tall, really rather handsome man. I wonder what he’s going to try to sell me. Fish? Charity? God? He’s rather trendy, but I can’t see a portfolio so I don’t think he’s an artist who has come to show me his work, which does happen from time to time around here. He smiles apologetically and endearingly. He is somewhat familiar. A school dad, perhaps. I rack my brains to place him.

  ‘Mrs Mitchell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alison Mitchell?’

  Then I realise – it’s something to do with how he says my name, tentatively but somehow officially – this must be Jan Bonville’s husband, here to follow up on the insurance details. How did such a sour one as her land this charmer? There is no justice. He has gentle eyes, brown, deep; very different from Jan’s sharp, flashing ones.

  I’m irritated that she’s sent him. I haven’t even told Jeff about the incident yet. Somewhat defensively, I say, ‘Oh, I see, this is about the bump at drop-off. I think it’s quite unnecessary that you’ve turned up here. Jan and I have sorted everything out. I’ve accepted full responsibility.’ I am somewhat put out that I’m being hounded, but I think I’m more put out that Jan’s husband is handsome. She just doesn’t deserve it.

  ‘Jan?’ Confused, the man tilts his head to the right and squints at me.

  ‘It’s not about the car?’

  ‘No. I don’t know anything about a car.’

  ‘Oh.’ I feel a bit of an idiot.

  ‘Are you – look, I’m sorry. This is going to seem a bit peculiar.’

  He breaks off and looks to the ground, awkward. He’s wearing skinny jeans and washed-suede boots which look artfully distressed and a soft, dark-grey leather jacket; not the scruffy-biker or cowboy type, the really stylish type. He has a thick, grey scarf wrapped around his neck, although he doesn’t seem unduly concerned about the autumn breeze. His jacket is open, showing a white T-shirt; it hangs casually off his broad shoulders. I wonder whether he’s one of Jeff’s friends. I do know him from somewhere, I’m sure of it.

  ‘Look,’ he goes on, ‘I’m sorry about this intrusion. I just need to know, do you have a daughter who was born in St Mary’s Hospital in Clapham between March 27th and 29th fifteen years ago?’

  ‘Yes. Katherine; her birthday is the 27th.’ I’m so used to being honest and straightforward that I splutter out this response before I consider whether this is the sort of info that should be routinely exchanged, on the doormat, with a total stranger.

  He swaps his expression of awkwardness for one of panic. ‘I should have sent a letter.’

  It’s such an odd thing to say. Who sends letters nowadays? The tax man, blackmailers and Jeff’s great-aunt. He’s not any of those. The man doesn’t look threatening, but he does look distressed. There’s something about his earnest but hopeless expression that makes me ask, ‘Should I get my husband?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I think that’s a good idea. We have something very important to discuss.’

  ‘Is Katherine in some sort of trouble?’ I can’t imagine what sort it could be. Katherine is universally described as a good kid.

  His mouth twists as though the words he has to spit out taste foul. ‘Can I come in? This is not something we can talk about on the doorstep.’

  4

  Jeff comes down the stairs at my request, curious, concerned. He doesn’t rush. He always has a misleadingly languid way of moving, I am the one who has the monopoly on frenzied and anxious movement. His gaze sweeps over the handsome man standing in the doorway.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘I ought to introduce myself. I’m Tom Truby.’ The stranger holds out his hand to Jeff, who automatically clasps and shakes it. I don’t recognise his name. As far as I’m aware, there isn’t a girl called Truby in Katherine’s year and I think I know the name of every child. Not a school dad, then. ‘There’s something we need to discuss,’ he says firmly again. ‘It’s extremely important.’

  Jeff doesn’t seem to consider the possibility that the man might be about to murder us brutally and steal all our possessions (something I’ve contemplated), because he invites him in. We all trail through to the kitchen, where Jeff offers to make coffee. Tom Truby says, ‘No, thanks, just water,’ and then suddenly changes his mind and asks for an espresso. A short drink, something you can swallow in one gulp, then leave in a hurry if necessary.

  He glances around the house, eyes darting from one thing to the next, taking in the bespoke cream country-kitchen cabinets, the black marble worktops and the Woodlawn Blue walls. I notice his eyes fall on the expensive details: the pastel-blue Smeg Fridge, the Grohe Duo filtered boiling-water tap, the brass-coloured Scandinavian pendant lights and the overflowing bowl of fruit. His scrutiny makes me feel uncomfortable, but then scrutiny often does. It’s true the tap was ridiculously expensive; most people can’t even imagine what it cost, which I’m grateful for – if people could guess they’d think we were insane. Jeff regularly points out how handy it is to have boiling water at the touch of a button, but I could get that before, by popping on the kettle. We actually sourced the brass-coloured Scandinavian pendant lights in Sweden, although I’ve since noticed that John Lewis do something similar; Jeff says they are not the same, and he’s right – the John Lewis ones would have saved us eight hundred quid. The magnets on the fridge are those word ones that people use to write funny messages to one another; Jeff has arranged them to form a haiku poem about autumn.

  A soft breeze drops the

  Scarlet leaf so like your lips.

  Mid September now.

  The fruit bowl seems the least pretentious thing about us and, even then, rambutan mingle with apples and bananas. In an effort to break the palpable tension in the room I almost offer this stranger a banana, as I do all of Katherine’s friends when they visit, but I stop myself just in time. His eyes linger longest on the photo wall. We have quite a display: a mixture of casual snaps and posed pictures taken on formal occasions. I follow his gaze; I never tire of staring at these photos. There’s the one of the three of us holding surfboards in Cornwall – I really haven’t ever got the knack; some of Katherine holding various academic certificates and lacrosse trophies – sometimes shy, sometimes proud; one of all the extended family at Jeff’s parents’ Golden Wedding anniversary party – that was such a lovely day; one of Katherine when she was just a month old; and another on her first day of school – adorable. The usual array, yet unique to every home. Mr Truby can’t take his eyes off them.

  ‘Why did you ask about Katherine’s birthdate?’ I ask, concern bubbling in my chest. He doesn’t answer my question but instead tells us that he lost his wife to cancer recently. Obviously, we offer up our condolences but it’s tricky to know what level of sympathy
is appropriate; we don’t know the wife, or the man, or understand why he’s in our kitchen, leaning against our counter. He waves away our ‘sorry’s, anyway, as though he’s tired of hearing the platitudes, as though he knows they can’t help.

  ‘It was ovarian cancer. By the end, she also had breast and lung cancer. Riddled with it. That’s what they say, isn’t it? That’s the expression.’ He stares at us with an angry intensity.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Truby,’ I say again.

  ‘Tom, please.’

  It is a bit odd calling him ‘Mr’. He’s not one of Katherine’s schoolteachers, but I also feel uncomfortable calling him Tom. He is so attractive that it’s awkward. I rarely notice anyone’s attractiveness nowadays – well, at least, not men’s; I’m often commenting on attractive women I see in the street, at the school gate or the shops, and so on. Women make so much more effort. By the time they reach my age most men look alike: a little plump, a little grey and balding, a little ruddy. I can’t remember when I last stumbled across a physically attractive man of my age. Young men are still lovely but, well, they are young and so very other that I stopped noticing them in that way long ago.

  This Tom man is definitely the sort women want to swing from chandeliers with.

  Beautiful people make me want to fold in on myself like an origami frog. But, besides Tom’s distracting charisma, there is something else that is making me feel uncomfortable. I get the feeling he is bringing us a problem. I flick a glance at Jeff. He returns a sympathetic smile which somehow communicates that he knows I’m panicking and he’s trying to reassure me. True, I often think there’s going to be an issue, a difficulty, a calamity, and I spend a lot of time worrying unnecessarily, but this time I’m certain. I instinctively know Tom Truby is trouble.