by Jan Jones
Skye brought Rob home the first Christmas after he started at university. They finished each other's sentences like a tag team as they told me how they'd come together, so much love between them it took me by the throat with happiness and I ached that Jilly would never see it. It seemed Rob had been serving in the student bar when Skye had walked in at the beginning of term and their eyes had met across the pandemonium. Two hours later, Rob had escaped from behind the counter on the pretext of clearing tables, came straight across to where Skye was sitting and said something along the lines of "Why, aye, bonny lad, my name's Rob. What's yours?"
He'd lost the bar job the same night, due to talking solidly to Skye for the rest of the evening, but then got it back again the next day by dint of turning up for work as if nothing had happened.
"But it did, Mum," said Skye.
"I can see that," I replied, kissing them both, joy melting me.
Rob stayed with us every holiday after that. His own people had thrown him out. The family pub that had been home all his life didn't want 'his sort' on the premises, no matter how thick the blood ties or how hard a grafter he was.
Rob's life-plan was simple. He wanted to open his own bar and brasserie. He was doing a degree in business management because he already knew how to cook but he didn't know how to run a catering establishment profitably. He was making sure of the student grant for the difficult half of the plan before he tackled the easy bit. Meanwhile, he was keeping his hand in behind the student bar in order to live.
"You working during your spare time makes me feel guilty and privileged," said Skye, but Rob nudged his shoulder good-naturedly.
"You haven't got time to get a job, bonny lad," he said. "Not with the amount of prep you have to do. You've got another six or seven years bloody hard work in front of you. Then you'll be designing beautiful spaces, earning a fortune and can bankroll my bar."
Skye grinned. "Fair enough."
After finishing his own degree, Rob took a job in a hotel kitchen near the university until Skye graduated, then Skye found a placement in a London practice and studied for his final exams while Rob honed his craft in a dream post in a Michelin star restaurant. Blake was in his element, dropping 'his son the architect' into casual conversation and referring to 'his son's partner the graduate chef'.
It was a severe shock to him when Skye told us he was joining an architect’s practice in Cambridge where Rob was opening up his new bistro.
“It’ll give us space to breathe,” Skye whispered in my ear. “Even Dad can’t do London to Cambridge in less than ninety minutes.”
If Blake had taken a while to accept Rob as Skye's partner, it was nothing to how he felt about Ellie's eventual choice.
Ellie was the original rebel. She and Tori enjoyed music, dancing, concerts of all kinds and clubbing. Each of them went through a succession of unsuitable boyfriends with breathtaking speed.
For myself - noticing how Ellie dropped each boy as soon as Blake cultivated an interest in him - I was fairly convinced it was just high spirits, the knowledge that they were young and beautiful, and a healthy excess of energy. This was borne out one night when Blake emerged from his study just as Ellie got home, demanding to know what she was doing back this late and he'd seen her kissing that biker in the road outside and did the said biker know she was underage?
Ellie, never one to hold back if an argument was in the offing, retorted that coming back late was better than not coming back at all, the kiss was to say thanks for the lift, and that she'd only been dancing, for goodness sake, what on earth did he think she'd been doing? She'd been brought up better than that, hadn't she? It was his fault if she hadn't.
Blake went white. "What did you say?" he grated.
In a lightning change of mood, she balanced on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. "It was only dancing, Dad. Night night."
She ran upstairs, her energy undiminished. Blake got his breathing under control and fired a furious glance at me. "Those girls are going to be impossible over the summer holidays. It's no good you saying your mother will have them - she's never stopped thinking kids should play outside all year long. Can Jean get them jobs at the leisure centre?"
"There's no need to worry," I said. "We've already agreed that I'm hiring them as runners from the day after school breaks up. They'll be so busy they won't even have time to spend the money they'll be earning."
Blake harrumphed and disappeared back into his study. I sighed at the closed door. Now what was wrong? The fact that Ellie was having fun? The fact that I'd sorted her out for the summer without consulting him? The fact that she'd argued with him? It could be anything.
Ellie had a beautiful voice and she'd always enjoyed the TV buzz whenever she'd worked for me, so when she announced she was going to specialise in performing arts for her A-levels, I wasn't surprised. Then her GCSE results came in surprisingly high, so she switched to business studies, doing music and amateur dramatics on the side. Remembering my own experience, I enrolled her on a touch-typing course which she flew through. After she'd got thoroughly bored in a couple of dead-end jobs, a several-times-removed cousin on my father’s side got her a position as an academic secretary at Imperial College and she moved out to share a tiny flat with Tori who was doing nursing and midwifery at University College Hospital.
Far from being pleased about these promising signs of settling down, Blake was disgruntled that once again, my family had turned up trumps in finding her employment when none of his own suggestions had borne fruit.
"Honestly, Blake," I said, "there are so many of us, it would be surprising if no one could help on any given occasion. The entire world runs on nepotism. Why shouldn't Duncan put forward a family connection for an interview if a suitable job comes up in his department? Everyone else does. She got the job on her own merits after that."
I carefully didn't mention that Duncan was quite good-looking in a dark, sultry, reformed-pirate fashion. It would be nice if something came of it, but most unfortunately he washed regularly, had more than a nodding relationship with the barber, and held down a good job. These circumstances alone would keep him off Ellie's boyfriend list if the last few years were anything to go by.
Blake may have come to the same conclusion. At any rate he was soothed, right up until the moment we were watching the Last Night of the Proms on television and saw Ellie and Duncan, in the middle of the promenaders, kissing foursquare in the centre of the screen. Not just any old kiss either. This one clearly meant it.
The phone rang almost instantly. Lifting the receiver, I could hear the same programme in the background. "I didn't know Ellie was seeing Duncan!" yelled Skye in my ear.
I eyed the screen where both Ellie and Duncan were looking rather dazed. "I don't think they did either," I replied.
Now I chuckled as I got into bed and turned off the light. It was funny, looking back on it, but it hadn't been at the time. Mark had rung me straight after Skye put the phone down, and I'd no sooner told him I'd let him know what was going on once I'd talked to Ellie herself, than Mum was on the phone with the same question, closely followed by Aunty Pam. Blake's temper had got shorter with each call. I'd had to miss the rest of the programme and take the phone into the kitchen in the end.
Duncan and Ellie still go to the Last Night of the Proms every year, taking the kids with them. I remember vividly when Oliver was born. Ellie had been fretting that she'd miss their Albert Hall anniversary as that was when she was about due. Tori exercised her midwifery divination skills and declared the baby would be born with a couple of weeks to spare, and so it had proved. Mind you, the moment of wide-eyed shock when they all realised Oliver had a mop of tow-coloured hair was wonderful to behold.
"Ellie!" said her friend with a shriek.
“Come on, Tori,” I said. "You must have seen that before. It often happens. Ellie was born with fair hair herself. It darkened later, but even if it hadn’t, a family as large as ours has got every gene going somewhere. It’s pure lottery w
hich ones make their way into the egg.”
"That," said Tori, "is a brilliant explanation. I'll keep it for my other mothers. Also for the fathers."
I went to make phone calls to the family, leaving Tori to tidy up and Duncan, Ellie and Oliver to bond. Maybe it was the adrenalin spike of seeing my daughter safely through childbirth, but I felt surprisingly deflated now it was over. She'd grown up at last. I remembered the heart-stopping moment when I first set eyes on her own head of fair hair. Where had the years gone?
I said as much to Mark when I rang him with the news. "It's a boy. Tori says mother and baby are both doing well. Tori was very good, by the way. Ellie and Duncan are over the moon."
"That's great," said Mark. "And how are you?"
"I feel awfully old. It doesn't seem more than a moment since Ellie was born herself."
"I know, but we're not old really, Caro. We're not even approaching our prime. Give Ellie my love. Is Blake pleased he's got a grandson?"
My heart skipped a beat as I realised I'd automatically rung Mark first. "I haven't told him yet," I said. "I'll send him a text. He hates being disturbed when he's writing and I wanted a proper conversation." Talking too much, Caroline. Stop now while you're still above water.
There was a small pause during which Mark tactfully didn't ask what man minded being disturbed when his daughter had just been safely delivered of a baby. "A proper conversation before you call your mum and can't get a word in edgeways, you mean? Okay, I'll see you later if you manage to get into the office."
I sighed. That was also all in the past now. As Mark had said this morning, even the grandchildren were growing up fast, with lives busier than one of my production schedules. Oliver was nearly twelve and Ellie and Duncan had just bought their own ‘renovation opportunity’, a run-down family house with a garden backing onto the railway line. They were having the housewarming this weekend, complicated by there being a charity concert in the community centre the same evening that Sasha, their youngest, was singing in.
This clashing of events was the stuff of life to Ellie. “The concert will clear the place nicely,” she'd said, calling into the office after sourcing off-beat decorations for the party from Camden Market. “Someone can stay behind to let Skye and Rob in. It's a shame they can't get away before Rob's finished prepping for the evening.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And I suppose this someone might clear up all your guests' used glasses and put the dishwasher on and lob the joint in the oven for later?”
She grinned at me. “Love you, Mum.”
Blake was furious about Ellie’s new house, largely because she and Duncan hadn’t consulted him, even more so since he'd discovered they had asked Duncan's father what he thought about the purchase. That they'd also consulted Skye regarding the soundness of the structure didn't count.
“It'll be much too noisy with the trains running late into the night and it's also completely unsafe with just that scrubby bank down to the track,” he said again at breakfast on Saturday when I raised the question of what time we should leave. “Skye’s apartment in Cambridge is far better value for money. It’ll be worth a fortune when all the new building in the area is finished.”
“So will Ellie's house be, once they've done it up," I replied. "They probably won’t even hear the noise from the trains after the first couple of weeks. That wire fence along the back means there’s no danger of the kids tumbling onto the track by accident. Children need a garden to run about in, Blake. Look at the fun Oliver and Sasha always have here. It’s not something Skye and Rob are ever going to have to worry about.”
He opened the paper, shutting me out. He was cross anyway because of getting a rejection for a proposed mini-series yesterday. As I ran the water for the washing up, I thought of Ellie and Duncan, laughing together, occasionally yelling, but above all talking to each other all the time. We never did. Not properly. It was a marriage of habit and convenience.
This isn’t living, I thought despairingly. What had happened to the colourful future I’d once assumed lay in store for me? Was that why Jean had left? Because she wasn't where she'd wanted to be?
“I went to the V&A the other day,” I said, trying to talk myself away from the grey stretch of forever that had opened up with horrid presentiment in front of my eyes. “They’ve got a David Bowie exhibition going right back to the early years.”
Silence. Blake continued to drink his coffee and read the paper as if answering me was unimportant. Normally this didn't bother me, but today I came over all Ellie-like. I wanted to rattle him, make him talk to me. I wanted to shake the all-too-familiar feeling that I might as well not be here. “You were in one of the photos, watching the band and arguing with Jilly. I didn’t think you knew her that well.”
He turned a page in crisp irritation, folded it neatly back on itself. “I was going to marry her,” he said.
The plate I was washing dropped out of my hand into the water. My hand followed it. As I turned to look at Blake, astounded, I felt the water lapping my wrist, felt my hand heating with the temperature while the other one pressed fingertips into the draining board to keep me anchored to reality.
“Marry Jilly?" I said. "You were going to marry Jilly? You’ve never told me that before.”
He continued to read. “There was no need to tell you. It didn’t happen. She went travelling.” His voice was flat and dead. Indifferent.
“Oh come on, Blake, you can hardly blame her for that. She was twenty two and wanted to see the world.”
“It was most inconsiderate of her.”
Inconsiderate. What a very Blake word. “Is that why you chose me, then?" I asked flippantly. "Because I’m more reliable?”
I shouldn’t have goaded him. I'd known he was cross, and he's always hated being interrupted whilst reading the paper. He turned another page with an annoyed rattle of paper.
“No, I married you because you had adopted Skye.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I married you because you had adopted Skye.
It was a misstep so profound and astonishing that I gasped aloud. For a full ten seconds the world stopped in its tracks. Blake's words were as much of a shock as all those years ago when we heard the news about those three astronauts stranded in Apollo 13. I felt again the sheer incredulity at the realisation that something I had always taken for absolute truth (Blake loves you, the space programme is safe) turned out to be entirely opposite. “You married me to be close to Skye?” I repeated with disbelief. "Blake, is this a joke?"
“I married you in order to be Skye’s father,” Blake corrected. He looked at me dispassionately. It was his writer's face, distant and apart, as if he was recording my reaction for potential use later. “It's not a joke, Caro. Why would it be? The ridiculous stipulation Jilly wrote into her will meant I couldn’t adopt him in my own right, which I assure you would have been my first move otherwise. That was really very thoughtless of her. I'm still angry about it. The way things stood, marrying you was a simpler option than getting blood tests done and contesting the adoption in court. You weren’t Jilly, of course, but I couldn't help that. She was gone. I wasn’t going to lose my son as well.”
“Your son?”
“Certainly. I knew Skye was my son as soon as you told me he was Jilly's child. I'd taken steps, you see. His February birthday confirmed it. Jilly may have been secretive about her plans, but she wasn’t seeing anyone else. I’d have noticed.”
“Oh,” I said faintly. I hadn’t even known she was seeing Blake. How could she never have mentioned it? This was wrong, it had to be. Reality was streaming away from me, like sand slipping through my frantically clutching fingers.
“I’ve thought about it a great deal since,” Blake went on. “The pregnancy must have been why she continued with the travelling. Most people would have come home in a situation like that, but I've observed how women’s hormones frequently have a destabilising effect. Making you the boy’s guardian, for example. That was decidedly ecce
ntric, but I could turn it to my advantage. You seemed a biddable girl. You were young enough to be malleable. I didn’t anticipate you being any trouble, certainly less trouble than any of my other girlfriends." He paused, his eyes reflective. "I hadn't bargained on your family, but again, I've had my money's worth out of them over the years by way of incidents and characters to use in my work. No, it was simple. I just had to tell you I loved you, have sex frequently enough to keep you docile, provide not quite enough money to manage the house and make sure you stayed busy earning the rest yourself.” He looked at me calmly. “You've surprised me on several occasions, Caro. I was really very annoyed when you kept interfering over the au pairs, for example. But in general it hasn't been too difficult or displeasing. I’ve been quite comfortable.”
I stared at him, feeling more nauseous than I would have believed possible. “I don’t know what to say, Blake," I stammered. "Everything I thought... everything I knew... For thirty-seven years I’ve thought you loved me, at least to begin with. I've based our life on that. I’m not sure I can live with you any more.”
As the words stumbled out, release flooded me. The shackles of loyalty, so long worn I hardly noticed how they were weighing me down, crumbled to dust.
Blake sat back, considering my statement. “Where will you go?”
He wasn’t even going to argue with me. Thirty seven years and he wasn't even going to argue. I really was a ghost presence here, of no use or interest except as a long-ago means to an end. “I don’t know,” I said, clamping down on rising hysteria. “I’ll move into the flat above the office for now. I’m sorry, Blake. I know it must seem illogical when we’ve been sharing the house and the children for so long. It’s just that our whole life together has been based on a lie. That’s a really big thing to absorb. I need time to come to terms with it.”
He frowned. “Skye is arriving this evening. How are you going to explain not being here?” Again, he wasn't arguing, just asking for information, synchronising our stories for the family.