I want to cry. I turn away from him and drag Luca with me, causing the boy to shout back ‘Salut, Jorge,’ confirmation that this man is obviously in the kids’ lives and I am, therefore, likely to see him again.
‘I’m sorry for laughing,’ he says. ‘No harm’s done. He’s okay.’ He starts to walk alongside us as I hurry us back to the grassy area where I pray I’ll find Léa.
‘Thank you,’ I say quietly. ‘For finding him. I mean, now I know you’re not an axe murderer or child abductor or something.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He smiles, and there’s a glimmer of laughter back in his eyes. ‘Have you lost Léa too?’
I feel my eyebrows arch and my voice comes out icy. ‘She’s waiting for us over there.’
‘Woah, just asking.’ He puts his hands up. ‘I’ll come and say hello to my buddy then.’
‘Jorge!’ Léa sees us walking towards her and weaves her way between the sprawled bodies to reach us. He sweeps her into a hug and she squeals, her feet dangling off the ground.
‘Salut, ma belle, ça va?’
‘Ouais,’ she says. ‘We have to speak English – for Jess.’
‘Of course.’ He looks at me and I realise I never told him my name. ‘I just met Jess – she was getting worried about your brother.’
‘Oh, you have found him?’ Léa asks, and I can’t help but smile at the indifference of both kids: Léa, more excited by Jorge’s arrival than her brother’s reappearance; and Luca, quietly eating the remains of his ice cream with a studious intensity.
Jorge joins us on the grass and my nerves settle as I listen to him tease Léa and tickle her until she begs him to stop. Luca, finally sated with ice cream, falls asleep on the picnic blanket and I lie back on my elbows as the next band comes on, a local jazz quartet Jorge assures me is fantastic. Léa settles down next to him and I sneak a sideways look at them as they both watch the stage, Jorge nodding his head along to the beat and Léa attempting to copy him. His face and arms are tanned, his mop of light brown hair slightly bleached by the sun at the front, thin white lines in the crinkles beside his eyes. There’s some sort of official lanyard around his neck and I see his picture beneath the English word ‘Staff’ in bold letters. In my panic over Luca, I hadn’t noticed that at first.
‘Good, huh?’ he says to me, nodding to the stage, and I nod back. I rummage around in my bag to get out my phone to take a picture of the band. I press the camera icon on my phone and hold it up to the stage, take a picture.
‘Me and Jorge!’ Léa says. Jorge nods and puts his arm around her. I fill the frame with the two of them. Jorge’s gaze seems to bore into me. I take the snap and put the phone back in my bag.
‘You work for the festival?’ I ask him.
He nods. ‘I’m a booker.’
‘Meaning what, exactly?’
‘I listen to a lot of music. Go to see live bands, talk to venues and agents, try to find up and coming bands we can book for the festival.’
‘Sounds like an amazing job.’
‘It is,’ he says, and then hesitates. ‘But it’s torture at times, too.’ He looks towards the stage and I see his face darken momentarily before a smile returns to his lips. ‘I guess it’s like being a science teacher instead of a scientist. Or a stagehand instead of an actor.’
A nanny to someone else’s children instead of a mother yourself, I think. I wonder if he has kids. I glance at his hands and see he’s not wearing a wedding ring. Not that that means anything, of course. Neither am I. At our age there’s always baggage, even if it’s not visible.
‘So you play?’
‘Yeah, piano. I have a band. We gig for fun around the region.’
‘But you want more?’
‘Who doesn’t?’ He shrugs. ‘But I have to earn a living, and like you say, this is a pretty awesome job. Speaking of which, I should go.’ He checks his watch and gets up from the grass.
‘Oh, right.’ I hesitate. ‘Listen, you won’t… tell your mother, or the Chevalleys, will you?’
His eyes hold mine. ‘About what?’
‘About losing Luca.’
He cocks his head to one side and heat prickles the back of my neck. ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he says. ‘But just look after them, okay? They’re good kids, these two.’ He smiles, and there’s no reprimand in his voice.
‘I will.’
He nods, as though convinced. ‘À bientôt les enfants,’ he says to the kids, and then he turns away. I squint into the sun at his retreating back as he picks his way through the crowd to the lakeshore.
‘Jorge’s the best.’ Léa flops on her front on the grass. Then she turns her head and smiles. ‘But you’re second best.’
APRIL 1976 Oxfordshire/London, UK
SYLVIA
Basil was the first to greet them, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his ears flapping as he rushed towards the car.
‘Basil! Heel!’ Pamela half jogged down the drive after the Jack Russell. Sylvia forced a smile. Deep breaths. ‘You’re here! Goodness, and only half an hour late too! Traffic must have been good?’
‘Not bad, Mum,’ Jim said.
They stepped out of the car and Pamela pulled them both into a hug in turn. She stepped back and threw a pointed look at Sylvia’s stomach, as though she could see the pea-sized being within. ‘Well, I can’t say the timing is quite what we had in mind for you.’
‘Darling, let them come into the house before the interrogation starts.’ Simon slapped Jim on the back and kissed Sylvia on the cheek. She was always struck by how much Jim looked like his father. This would be her soon-to-be-husband in twenty-five years’ time. The thought unnerved her, not because Simon was unattractive, but because it felt like one more sign that life was already mapped out for them, however differently they attempted to live it.
Inside, Pamela summoned Sylvia to help her make tea as Jim and his father talked on the lawn, freshly mown into perfect stripes.
‘I’m not going to harp on about it.’ Pamela poured water into the teapot. ‘All that matters is you’re getting married and you’ll be blessed with a child, and that’s simply wonderful. Tongues will wag, but we’ll just have to turn a blind eye.’
Sylvia was arranging the biscuits on a plate with methodical precision. Jammie Dodgers, Bourbons, Rich Tea.
‘Thank you, Pamela,’ she said with equal care. ‘I’m glad you’re pleased.’ At least now there would be no big ceremony in a church, no manor house reception with one hundred pairs of eyes on her the whole day. Though she would never say it to Jim, part of her was relieved. Thank you, baby.
‘Delighted. It’s such an exciting time for you both! I just wish you had a little longer to sort things out. You’ll be moving in with Jim straight after the wedding, I presume?’
Sylvia looked through the kitchen window to the garden where Jim and his father were sitting in the spring sun. A blue tit was flying in and out of a birdbox fixed to the side of the house. Strangely, she hadn’t thought what they’d do about that, but she supposed they’d have to move in together now they’d be a married couple with a baby on the way. A pang of sadness struck her. No more sharing with Maggie. She didn’t feel they’d been flatmates nearly long enough. ‘I suppose I will,’ she said. ‘But there’s time to think about that.’
‘Time? You’re getting married Saturday after next!’ Pamela’s voice was shrill. ‘And your pregnancy will go very quickly you know. There’s so much to do. You’ll have to think about what equipment you’ll need, which room you’ll use as a nursery. I expect you’ll want to decorate it. And don’t leave it too late – I was so tired in the last trimester of both my pregnancies I could hardly lift a finger!’
Sylvia followed her into the garden carrying the biscuits, the wake of Pamela’s perfume making her feel queasy. She settled into a wicker chair and watched as her future mother-in-law poured the tea. ‘I’ll be mother,’ Pamela said.
‘You are mother, Mother,’ Jim said, and the three of them laug
hed at the predictable in-joke. Sylvia feigned a smile. She wished Jim’s sister was here. But Jemima was probably still in India or Pakistan or wherever she’d run off to this time, as Pamela always put it. Why can’t she be more like her brother?
‘How’s work, Jim?’ Simon asked. ‘Callaghan keeping you in headlines?’
Sylvia watched Jim as he told his father about his latest features and the lawsuit the magazine was embroiled in. He’d come a long way since his internship. Sylvia felt a flush of pride – for him, for both of them. They’d done well since leaving Oxford. They’d fulfilled the expectations their tutors had of them. But now Jim was going to continue on his upwards trajectory while she stalled. In another couple of years their careers would probably look very different. Did he realise? Would it even have occurred to him how this could affect her?
‘And how about your job, Sylvia darling? Are they planning a good send off?’ Pamela said.
‘Oh, I haven’t told work yet.’
‘Yes, well I suppose it won’t do to tell them until after you’re married.’ She fixed Sylvia with a knowing smile. ‘But don’t leave it too late. They’ll be wanting to find a replacement, I suppose. And you may as well make the most of it. A few extra lie-ins, time off for doctor’s appointments. They should be going easy on you now.’
‘I don’t want them to go easy on me.’
Jim threw Sylvia a warning look. ‘Syl loves her job. She’s going to find it tricky to give it up.’
‘I’m not going to give it up. I’ll have a few weeks off and then go back, if Roger agrees. It’s not the fifties, you’re not expected to resign when you get married.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ Jim’s voice was light but she caught the subtext: and you know it.
Pamela pinched her mouth into a thin line. ‘Darling, I know you’re a career girl,’ she said, waggling her head for emphasis, ‘but this is more important. Who will look after the little one if you go back to work? Baby’s going to need you at home now. Everything else must take second place.’
Sylvia stared at the grass. A lone trio of daisies had obviously escaped the gardener’s mower and stood sentinel in the centre of the lawn. ‘It doesn’t have to be like that these days,’ she said, trying not to think how much a nursery or a nanny would cost.
‘Well, I don’t know about that. I know times have changed since my day, but babies still need their mothers.’
‘I think babies need their mothers to be happy.’
‘I’m just saying—’
‘Pam.’ Simon cut her off. ‘This is for Jim and Sylvia to work out. It’s a quarter of a century since our day. It won’t all be the same now. I’m sure the baby will be fine, whatever they decide. They are responsible adults.’
‘Well, I’m sure they are,’ Pamela raised one eyebrow. ‘Oh! Look at those wretched things!’ She got up and walked over to the three daisies, picked them one by one, went to the other end of the garden and threw them on the compost heap.
* * *
She got married in purple, much to Pamela’s dismay. Sylvia had loved the dress the moment she saw it in the shop with Maggie on a pre-wedding trip to Oxford Street. Maggie, chief – and only – bridesmaid wore green, and the whole thing brightened up an otherwise grey but humid late April day. Sylvia felt a rush of affection for her new husband that he, though once eager for a full-blown traditional affair, seemed so overwhelmed they were actually getting married that he didn’t seem to care that the dress wasn’t white or that they were one of many couples at the registry office that day, or that his parents felt the need to apologise to hers for their son causing Sylvia’s delicate state.
‘I love you,’ Jim whispered as he bent to kiss her after the ceremony, a broad smile on his face. And for a brief moment, she felt perhaps everything would be okay.
Her father gave a speech after they sat down to roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, as Susie’s youngest cried, and Jemima, on a brief hiatus from her travels, chased the kids around the small pub garden. Afterwards, her father hugged her and said he was proud of her, whatever path she chose. She balked at that, wondering if it actually meant the opposite, that she’d disappointed him for accidentally veering her life off its intended course. But she didn’t ask him; didn’t want to hear the answer. Her mother fussed over the wrinkles in Sylvia’s dress, smoothed her hair and worried about the one glass of champagne she’d had to toast her own wedding. ‘They say you shouldn’t have any, you know,’ she said, lighting a cigarette, the smoke curling up to the ceiling.
They left in Jim’s mini in a rush of goodbyes, hugs and congratulations. Sylvia drove them up the motorway, glad of the sudden silence after the noise of the pub. They checked into a country cottage near Bourton-on-the-Water for their one night of honeymoon and he insisted on carrying her over the threshold, despite her protestations. He poured himself a whisky from the minibar and she opened the doors to the little patio and walked out into night air that smelled like freshly cut grass. He joined her, put his arm around her.
‘Well, here we are, Mrs Millson.’
‘Tallis,’ she said. ‘Ms Tallis. I’m keeping my name.’
He stared at her. ‘I didn’t know that. You didn’t say.’
‘You didn’t ask.’
‘No, I suppose I didn’t. But why on earth would you do that?’
‘It’s important to me. Professionally, I mean. I don’t want my byline to change. You understand.’ She twisted the unfamiliar second ring around her finger.
He looked at her with a sad smile. She saw the effort it was taking him not to press the matter, and she loved him for it. Finally, he nodded. ‘Okay. Ms Tallis it is. As long as you’re still my missus.’
She turned to him and planted a light kiss on his mouth, looked into his soft, kind eyes.
‘I am,’ she said.
JULY 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
JESS
Despite myself, I still feel a jolt of joy to see his name in my inbox. Patrick Faulkner. But then I open the email.
I read it once, then again, and again.
I’ve found a new place to buy, Jess, and I need a deposit, so I think we should put the flat on the market. 50-50, that’s what we agreed. I guess we need to move on now, sign those divorce papers.
I drop my phone on the duvet and lie back on the bed. Though I knew this would happen, it still hits me like a punch in the gut. I read it again and sense a slight question mark in his email, as though he’s asking me if I really mean it, if I actually want us to go through with the divorce, and I wonder for the hundredth time if I could forgive him and move past what he did. Part of me aches to do so, but I know I can’t let myself, despite what it means for my future. How could I, when he hurt me to the core when I was already so broken? He kicked me when I was down – and that feels unforgivable.
Light is streaming through the window of my bedroom, even though it’s only 5am. Sleep has eluded me for the past hour. The house is silent – it’s even too early for Luca to wake – and the lack of noise is oppressive, pushing me to fill it with thoughts and feelings I’d rather ignore. Like those weeks after we met in that bar on my friend Rachel’s thirtieth birthday: his wide smile, the crinkles by his eyes, the touch of his hands on my skin for the first time. It’s strange to think how much lighter my head was back then, not weighed down as it feels now. Only filled with love and hope and expectation. We’d get married, live in a nice house, have a couple of kids, succeed in our jobs, earn enough money. I remember how utterly sure I felt it would happen in that way, even if I never articulated it out loud. It’s what I wanted, what all my friends wanted – to have it all. Thirty when we met, thirty-four when we got hitched. Perfect timing. I thought we were strong enough to handle anything, but in the following five years so much changed, so much happened to set us apart from each other, and it turned out we weren’t that strong after all.
We’re not us anymore.
That’s what Patrick said when I confronted him about what a
workmate had seen: a kiss in a doorway. Smiles and laughter. Tumbling into a cab.
You’ve let this situation take over your life, you’re just wallowing in misery. We don’t laugh anymore, and I need to laugh, Jess.
As though it was my fault, as though I pushed him into bed with her.
A knot of anger pulses in my temples. I know I can’t have been easy to live with as I wrestled with the fallout from the tests, but I expected more from my husband. I expected understanding and patience as I figured out how to live in this new orbit – because that’s what it felt like, as though my whole world had shifted on its axis. I knew, from the bewildering period after Mum’s accident, what a cruel thing it is to have your life rocked so fundamentally and yet everything around you stay the same. And here I was again, grieving for something lost, but still having to put one foot in front of the other, go to work, buy groceries, cook dinner. How could I stand in the supermarket deciding between chicken soup and minestrone? How could I sort whites from colours as though it mattered? How could I go to St Mary’s every day and teach Year 9 students about the symbolism in Wuthering Heights? What I’ve learnt is that you just do. So I just did. But it didn’t mean I was okay; it didn’t mean I was the same inside. And perhaps I took it out on him; perhaps he bore the brunt of it. But wasn’t that marriage?
In good times and in bad, that’s what Patrick and I vowed to each other. But I guess the bad times just went on too long for him to deal with. So he cheated.
* * *
It’s been five days since I sent messages to thirty-one Daniel Buchs from my list. I’ve had six replies, three of them in German, all saying – I deduced using Google Translate – that they do not have and have never had a sister called Evelyne and I am barking up the wrong tree. Some were curt, others polite, one even made suggestions, saying I should place an advert with a newspaper. But none of them was the Daniel Buchs.
Time passes slowly when you’re constantly checking all your available technology for new messages. I consider Daniel Buchs number five’s suggestion. Of course I’ve thought of that before, but I couldn’t bear it if a newspaper started asking questions and found out what happened to me. Granted, they might also then discover what I need to know, but the price for that would be my name all over the papers. Patrick, Maggie and Dad are the only people who have ever needed to know what I discovered two years ago, and I want to keep it that way.
The Other Daughter Page 11