My Mother's Secret

by Sheila O'Flanagan

‘I remember you going to Edinburgh,’ said Sarah slowly. ‘I remember you asking if I could help look after the kids while you were away. You said you’d had the chance to be involved in some kind of artists’ retreat and exhibition.’

  ‘We were talking about that earlier, Mum. You were cool as a breeze when I mentioned it!’ Davey exclaimed.

  ‘I took the children for a few days,’ remembered Sarah. ‘You didn’t see fit to tell me the truth of why.’

  ‘It was a personal matter,’ said Pascal, his voice softening as he looked at Jenny’s distraught face. ‘You didn’t need to know.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ Lucinda turned to her sister. ‘The golden girl with the feet of clay.’

  ‘Lucinda, please.’ Jenny’s voice trembled. ‘It was a hard time for Pascal and me.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘I’m not proud of myself,’ said Jenny. ‘But …’ she bit her lip to stop it quivering and continued, ‘but I am very proud of how Pascal and I worked things out in the end.’

  ‘You worked it out by lying to everyone!’ cried Lucinda. ‘To me, to Sarah, to your children!’

  ‘We didn’t share something very personal,’ Pascal corrected her. ‘It was nobody’s business but our own. And Steffie’s, of course. Obviously we should have told her before now. That’s as much my fault as Jenny’s.’

  Jenny shot him a grateful glance.

  ‘Seems to me it’s you, Pascal, who made sure everything worked out.’ Sarah couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. ‘You’re a paragon. You must be so proud of not being married to him, Jenny.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Davey gave a deep sigh. ‘I thought I was part of the most boring, normal family in the world. Turns out I’m living an episode of Jeremy Kyle. My parents aren’t married. My sister isn’t my sister. Anything else I don’t know about? Dad? Mum? Anything else to share?’

  Jenny shook her head.

  ‘So you went away, and when you returned, things went back to the way they were.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pascal when Jenny didn’t speak.

  ‘But you still didn’t get married.’

  ‘No.’ Jenny wiped her eyes with the shreds of her already sodden tissue. ‘I just … I didn’t want to force Pascal into anything. And then, when Steffie was born, it didn’t seem to matter any more.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Sarah. ‘You have a baby by another man and your partner, who’s not even married to you, sticks by you. Whereas James and I, with four children of our own and after a flashy wedding that nearly ruined us financially, couldn’t manage to hack it. You must have laughed at me every single day!’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ said Jenny.

  ‘And while I was struggling to bring Alivia up on my own, Steffie was accepted by Pascal.’ Lucinda shook her head. ‘How is it you always manage to end up on your feet, Jenny? The rest of us get slapped in the face by life but you sail blithely on, no mud sticking.’

  ‘I’d hardly call it sailing blithely on,’ said Jenny. ‘It was the most horrible time of my life.’

  ‘But then Steffie was born and you doted on her,’ said Roisin. ‘She was spoiled and pampered the whole time. Even you, Dad. You brought her everywhere with you.’

  ‘Overcompensating?’ murmured Davey.

  ‘When Jenny and I decided that we were staying together, I knew that we couldn’t and wouldn’t treat Steffie any differently to the two of you,’ said Pascal.

  ‘But you did!’ cried Roisin. ‘You indulged her like you never indulged us. She always got everything she ever wanted. You kept bailing her out of the financial holes she gets herself into because she’s so fecking hopeless. You still do.’

  ‘We had more money by then so it was easier to help her,’ said Pascal. ‘But if you two had needed the same sort of help we would have done everything we could for you. You know we would. Look, all this was particularly painful and difficult for your mother and me at the time, but we worked it out in our own way. I’m proud of how we did that. I’m proud of her and I’m proud of my children, and although I can’t honestly say that I wouldn’t change a thing, I can say that we both did our best for all of you.’

  There was a silence after Pascal’s words. Roisin and Davey exchanged glances but neither of them knew what to say.

  ‘Well that’s very noble, Pascal, and I’m sure we’re all impressed by your forgiving attitude,’ said Lucinda before turning to her sister. ‘But Jenny – two unwanted pregnancies, for crying out loud! Why didn’t you ever use protection? What were you thinking?’

  ‘Not that I have to answer these intensely personal questions …’ Jenny was suddenly spirited again, ‘but I did. Mostly.’

  ‘Too much information.’ Davey winced.

  ‘I know. But everyone seems to think it’s OK to find out.’

  ‘I do not think there is anything so terrible in all of this.’ It was Camilla who spoke, her precise English sounding calm and reasoned after the agitated comments of the others. ‘People make mistakes but it seems to me that Jenny and Pascal have dealt well with everything that has happened. They are happy and brought up their children well together in a strong family unit. There is no need for anger.’

  ‘I’m not angry about the mistakes!’ said Sarah. ‘I’m angry that over my whole life Jenny and Pascal have been like the perfect couple, with their happy marriage and their lovely kids and their two houses. And now I realise it’s all been based on a lie. Two lies!’

  ‘But this is not something you should be upset about,’ said Camilla. ‘This is their life, not yours.’

  ‘Everyone else in this family has lived in the shadow of their life!’ cried Sarah. ‘I listened to Jenny’s advice when my marriage was going down the pan. I thought someone as happily married as her might have some insights. And now I know what they were. Don’t get married, and shag a nude model. Brilliant!’

  ‘Mum.’ Carl, who was standing beside her, put his hand on her arm.

  ‘Oh, don’t Mum me!’ cried Sarah. ‘You can’t talk about how people should behave when you turned up here and paraded your piece of fluff in front of a girl who has more class than her in her little finger.’

  ‘Mum!’ Carl glanced between Summer and Bernice. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘Don’t call me stupid,’ said Sarah. ‘You’re the stupid one to have cheated on the woman who’s been an absolute saint today.’

  ‘Mum.’ This time it was Colette who put a hand on Sarah’s arm. ‘This isn’t the time or the place.’

  ‘It’s as good as any time and place!’ retorted Sarah. ‘Let’s get all the dirty laundry out there.’

  ‘Thank you for your support, Sarah,’ said Bernice. ‘But it’s OK.’

  ‘It’s not OK to me,’ said Summer. ‘You’ve no right to insult me. Besides, Carl loves me, don’t you, babes?’ She leaned her head against Carl’s arm.

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Of course he doesn’t love you,’ said Sarah. ‘He’s doing to you what Jenny did to Pascal. Maybe it’s some kind of bad gene in the Marshall side of the family and it’s coming out in my kids. After all, Colette’s a serial fiancée, and if Carl can’t see that Bernice has been an absolute heroine today and is worth a thousand Summers, he’s a worse fool than I thought.’

  ‘You’re talking complete bollocks, Mum,’ said Colette. ‘I’m entitled to have as many fiancés as I like, and if Carl brings someone to the party while he and Bernice are on a break, that’s his business. Look, everyone’s upset, but Camilla is right, none of it is important right now. The best thing is that we allow Pascal and Jenny and the rest of their family to sort things out among themselves.’

  Jenny smiled weakly at her niece. ‘Thank you.’ Then she looked at Pascal. ‘We need to find Steffie. We need her to come home.’

  Pascal looked grim. ‘She said she didn’t want to be here,’ he said.

  ‘I have to know that she’s safe.’

  ‘Wherever she’s got to, she’ll have a job getting back.’ Roisin ha
d gone to the front door to look outside, and now she returned, a worried expression on her face. ‘There’s a massive flood at the gates. Bernice might have been right about the stream. I think it’s turned into a river. And it really has burst its banks.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Jenny and rushed out of the house.

  Everyone followed her. Roisin was right. The gates were half submerged by flood water. There was no way in or out.

  ‘She can’t have gone far.’ Pascal reassured Jenny again ‘She won’t have done anything silly.’

  ‘In this weather … in this rain …’ Jenny began to bite a nail, a habit she’d given up years earlier. ‘And I don’t care what you say, she shouldn’t be driving after drinking champagne.’

  The family had crowded around the doorway and everyone was looking outside. The rain was falling in almost vertical sheets and it was difficult to see even as far as the gate. But it was clear that, in a standard car, the road was all but impassable.

  ‘The end of the road must be completely under water by now,’ said Roisin.

  ‘If she turned the other way, up the hill, she should be OK,’ said Pascal.

  ‘And what then?’ demanded Jenny.

  ‘She could take the back road towards the village,’ said Roisin.

  ‘And what would she do there?’ asked her mother. ‘There’s sod all in Castlemoran.’

  ‘She could …’ But Roisin was unable to think of any words of comfort. Not that she should be comforting Jenny anyway. Everything was her fault. All of it.

  ‘Ring her.’ Daisy handed Roisin her mobile phone.

  Roisin hit Steffie’s number. Everyone waited as the call connected. And then they heard the faint jingle of a phone. Summer, who was nearest the kitchen, walked through to the veranda, where she picked it up.

  ‘Is this Steffie’s?’ she asked when she rejoined them.

  ‘Bugger,’ said Davey.

  Jenny was close to tears again. ‘It’s awful out there and she’s upset,’ she said. ‘What if she has a crash? Or if a tree comes down on her or something?’

  ‘It’s not windy,’ Pascal told her. ‘It’s raining, that’s all. And,’ he added as the sky lit up, ‘there’s still some lightning in the distance.’

  ‘So it could hit a tree, like in the garden,’ said Jenny. ‘And that could fall on her.’

  ‘You’re obsessed with trees, Jen,’ said Paul. ‘Don’t worry about Steffie. She can look after herself. She’ll be fine.’

  ‘She’s out there in a rainstorm!’ cried Jenny. ‘I don’t think she’ll be fine at all.’

  ‘She’s a good driver,’ said Davey. ‘She’ll manage.’

  ‘I’m a good driver but I wouldn’t like to be driving around in the rain,’ said Jenny. ‘Not in that little car anyway.’

  ‘I’ll go and look for her,’ said Bernice. ‘I still haven’t had any alcohol.’

  ‘You’ve just dried off!’ cried Jenny. ‘I can’t ask you to go out again.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Colette. ‘I haven’t had anything to drink either, and the Santa Fe will be able to get through the water.’

  ‘You’re not going out alone in that,’ said Sarah.

  ‘I’ve driven in worse,’ Colette told her.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Davey. ‘When we find her, I might be able to talk some sense into her.’

  ‘I don’t mind going with Colette,’ said Bernice.

  ‘You’ve done your good deed for the day already,’ Davey said. ‘Stay here, stay dry.’

  ‘I’m sure I’d be OK on my own,’ said Colette.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Davey. ‘What if you get stuck in a puddle? I know the women have been Amazonian so far today, but you might need a man’s strength.’

  ‘It’s not safe,’ said Sarah.

  ‘I won’t get stuck,’ Colette said.

  ‘But I’ll come with you all the same.’ Davey’s words were emphatic.

  ‘Do you want me to come too?’ asked Carl.

  ‘We’ll be fine together.’ Davey gave Colette an encouraging look. ‘You’ll be safe with me.’

  Colette gave him a short smile in return, then went into the kitchen and got her bag before running out of the house with him.

  ‘Phone me as soon as you find her!’ cried Jenny as Davey opened the door of the 4×4.

  ‘Will do,’ he called.

  Everyone watched as Colette started the engine and turned the car around. She headed down the gravel driveway and then through the flooded area at the gates, sending up a huge wave of water.

  ‘I hope she knows what she’s doing,’ muttered Roisin.

  ‘She’s competent enough.’ But Sarah didn’t sound entirely convinced.

  Chapter 22

  The exit had already been partly flooded when Steffie had driven out thirty minutes earlier, and for a moment she’d thought that her grand gesture of storming out of the house would be followed by a pathetic return after abandoning the Citroën at the gate, but she’d made her way through and, keeping in mind what had been said about the lower road being almost impassable, had turned up the hill.

  That was as far as her clear-headedness went, because once she’d got on to the road, she wasn’t able to think at all. She drove randomly, with no idea of where she was going and what she planned to do when she got there. The only thought going round and round her head was that the foundations of everything she’d believed about her family and about herself had been totally shattered because her parents had systematically lied to her for her whole life.

  Whatever their reasons had been for keeping their fake wedding a secret, not telling her about her real father was unforgivable. And that was something she could blame Pascal for too, because he could and should have insisted that Jenny tell her. It would have been a shock, of course, but a damn sight less of a shock than finding out at their surprise ruby wedding anniversary party. If nothing else, thought Steffie as she wiped her eyes with a tissue from the box on the dashboard, it proves that I’m right about surprise parties. They’re always a bad idea. Maybe Roisin will listen to me about things like this in future, not that we’ll be organising any more anniversary parties for Mum and Dad, given that they don’t have an anniversary to celebrate.

  Dad, she thought. I shouldn’t call him Dad, because my biological father is a New Zealand sheep farmer and part-time nude model. Well, hopefully not a nude model any more, she acknowledged; he had to be in his fifties at least. She couldn’t see fifty-year-old models being all that popular on the painting circuit. She shuddered. Anyway, whatever he’s doing now, he doesn’t even know I exist. Mum never told him. She never even tried to tell him, which was the one part of this sorry debacle Steffie really understood.

  She shook her head. Her mother had been totally in the wrong, and despite the fact that she hadn’t tried to make excuses, Steffie wanted neither to understand nor forgive her. No matter how hard she tried not to, she couldn’t help visualising the man Jenny had described to her. Tall and blond and attractive, with his ripped abs and desirable body. Someone her mother hadn’t been able to resist. Someone she’d been passionate about. Passionate about enough to cheat on her husband with. Steffie felt her stomach sink. Her parents had been so solid. And yet that had been nothing more than an illusion. She stifled a sob. Nothing was real. Least of all who she was.

  She felt as though she was crumbling inside, that the layers of the person who’d been Steffie Sheehan were peeling away from her and leaving someone else behind. Someone who was different to everyone else in her family. Someone who was a permanent reminder to both Jenny herself and Pascal that Jenny had betrayed him. How can Pascal even look at me without feeling angry? Steffie asked herself. And how can my mother look at me without thinking about sneaking away to have sex with a stranger? How can I be a proper part of the family when I’m nothing more than the cuckoo in the nest?

  Tears leaked down her face, blurring her vision even more than the rain beating against the windscreen. It was becom
ing increasingly difficult to see, even with the wipers on full. Part of her was beginning to regret having driven off, but how could she have stayed, knowing that everyone would be looking at her and realising her cinnamon-blond hair was a legacy from the unknown sheep farmer and not, as she’d always thought, the product of having a fair-haired mother and a dark-haired father.

  And is that why Roisin and I are so different too? She sniffed and wiped her eyes with her balled-up tissue. After all, Roisin is organised and capable, like Dad. And Davey has become that way. But the sheep farmer sounds like someone who drifted around, shagging whatever woman came his way. Perhaps that’s why I keep hooking up with the wrong men. Perhaps my legacy is not caring enough about the people I’m with. So I’ve got that from him and from Jenny – well, Jenny was totally selfish. And Roisin often says I’m selfish too. So clearly I’m more like my mother than I realised. I’m destined to live down to people’s expectations.

  And what are they thinking about me now? she wondered. No doubt they’ve been told that I’m not who they thought I was. Roisin is probably deciding that it’s because I’m not Dad’s daughter that I’m not the person she wants me to be. The rest of them – maybe they’re feeling sorry for me. Maybe they’re thinking that I never properly fitted in at all. I’m not as much a part of the family as I believed. I’m an outsider.

  A sudden increase in the volume of rain beating against the windscreen made her gasp and pushed all thoughts of people and their personalities out of her head. Driving in these conditions was scary. She couldn’t keep going for much longer. But she couldn’t turn back either.

  The Citroën’s headlights cut through the grey gloom of the evening. Normally, in August, it would simply be dusky at this time, but it was practically dark by now and the shadows of the surrounding trees and hedgerows danced in front of the headlights, while the rain continued to sluice down from the sky. The occasional roll of thunder in the distance made her jump each time she heard it, and she turned on the radio to drown it out.

  The station was playing a mournful love song, full of broken hearts and hopeless longing. The plaintive music suited her mood. She suddenly felt like a character in a horror movie – the stupid girl alone in her car not knowing that there are ghouls and vampires and potential murderers on the loose. OK, so she didn’t believe in ghouls or vampires, but it was kind of creepy being out here by herself. She wished someone was with her. She wished she didn’t feel so completely alone.