The Accidental Family

by Rowan Coleman

  The ring would be ready and perfectly sized within a couple of hours, so Louis suggested lunch. Bella suggested bridesmaid shopping and Sophie suggested the pub. In the end they compromised by going to the Bell, which was located next to a bridal shop and served food all day. As Sophie sipped her gin and tonic, she watched Louis and the girls talking, planning, laughing. They, the Gregorys, were a family now. A proper unit, something they had not been until very recently. And Sophie was proud that in some small way, she had helped make that happen. Or in a rather large way, actually, she admitted to herself, quietly blowing her own trumpet. After all, it was Sophie who had taken Bella and Izzy in when all she had to offer them was microwavable frozen dinners and a one-bedroom flat with a neurotic cat. And it was Sophie who had employed a private detective to track down the girls’ father after Carrie died. Sophie had stood guard over Bella and Izzy while she tried to work out if the wildly handsome stranger who happened to be their father was friend or foe, and it was she who had done her best to reconcile the three of them even when Bella insisted that she hated the father who had once abandoned her. Sophie had bonded them back together and she had done it for Carrie, for her dear friend who for so many years had always been the best, most free, and wildest part of her.

  Sophie looked at Louis, brushing a lock of dark hair from his eyes as he laughed at something Bella said.

  On many of the nights she spent alone in the B & B, Sophie sometimes wondered if she would ever have fallen for Louis if she hadn’t met him in that way and at that time. If he hadn’t been a confused man, a jilted husband suffering from guilt and loss? If she hadn’t loved the woman he’d once loved or fallen for his strange, lost daughters so hard, would she have felt the same way about him?

  “Hey, Wendy? Wendy Churchill, it is you!”

  Sophie was snapped out of her thoughts as Louis called after a woman who had walked past their table. “Don’t try and pretend you don’t know who I am!” Louis teased her jovially.

  Sophie studied the woman’s face as she slowly turned to face Louis. Perhaps a couple of years older than Sophie, she had reddish hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  “Louis Gregory,” the woman said slowly. “Last I heard you’d moved away.”

  “I came back.” Louis grinned as he stood up. “And so did you by the looks of things! Last time I saw you …well, it was over twenty years ago.”

  Sophie blinked as her betrothed stepped away from their table and engulfed the woman in a huge bear hug. She was smaller than Sophie, qualifying as petite, with slender hips and narrow shoulders, and the sort of pretty elfin looks that Sophie hadn’t realized until that very second she despised.

  “How long since you lived up north?” Louis asked, glancing at his girls. Izzy was doing her best to get the entire contents of one mini-sachet of ketchup onto a single French fry. Bella, though, was staring hard at this Wendy woman from underneath her bangs and listening intently to every word being said. Bella liked to know everything that was going on, she spent much of her young life trying to ensure that no piece of information, no matter how trivial it might seem, ever got past her.

  “Moved back down here about a year ago. I’ve got my own business—running costs are lower here and I missed it, it’s always been home.” Wendy smiled. “What about you? Where did you go and why did you come back?”

  “Well, it’s a long story, but basically I lost my wife in a car accident. I came back to look after my two daughters, Bella and Izzy.” Louis gestured at his daughters.

  “Good afternoon,” Bella said gravely.

  “They’re yours?” Wendy Churchill said, glancing briefly at the two girls without returning Bella’s greeting. “You’re a dad?”

  “Yes.” Louis laughed. “No need to sound so shocked, Wend! Bella is nearly seven, Izzy is four. I’m a dad twice over, and after a serious false start, I’m not doing too bad a job of it now. In fact, things are going really great and this …” Finally Louis gestured toward where Sophie was waiting to be introduced, but Wendy Churchill did not look at her. She looked back at Bella who, after a second wrinkled her nose and then wrested the pot of ketchup sachets from Izzy, choosing to ignore the stranger.

  “They look like you,” Wendy said slowly, as if she were processing some other hidden piece of information.

  “Do they?” Louis looked pleased. “I can see it with Bella, but Izzy is the image of her mum.”

  “No, they both look exactly like …you.” Wendy stopped, glanced over her shoulder, and then seemed to collect herself. Suddenly she beamed at Louis.

  “God, I’m sorry, it’s just been such a long time since I last saw you. I still think of you as sixteen, the great, tall, lanky lad you were. Bumping into you now—a real grown-up man with kids—is a bit of a shock.”

  “You don’t look any different,” Louis told Wendy, which made Sophie purse her lips a little because if this woman was about Louis’s age, some old school friend or something, then there was no way she could look the same as she had at sixteen. Not unless she’d had wrinkles and dark roots back then too.

  “Daddy, who is this lady and what does she want with us?” Bella returned her attention to the stranger. “And why is she staring at us as if we are animals in a zoo?”

  Sophie beamed at her; she could always rely on Bella to ask the pertinent questions.

  “This,” Louis said, finally tearing his eyes off Wendy’s face, “is my old friend Wendy Churchill. We used to go to school together.”

  “And we were a little bit more than friends,” Wendy said, smiling coyly, which made Sophie want to slap Wendy Churchill quite hard.

  “Oh well,” Louis chuckled, and Sophie was dismayed to see him flush. “You never wrote, you never called. You broke my heart, Wendy Churchill!”

  “You never tried to find me,” Wendy added, her tone a touch more serious than Louis’s.

  “Hey, you were the chucker, I was the chuckee,” Louis said. “And that reminds me, this is my fiancée, Sophie Mills.”

  Finally Wendy removed her gaze from Louis’s face and looked at Sophie.

  “Wow, you don’t let the grass grow, do you? I thought you said your wife only just died.” Sophie found it rather hard to maintain her fake smile.

  Louis laughed awkwardly. “Carrie and I had been apart for three years when she died,” he explained, his smile faltering. “Sophie was there for me and the children when it happened. She saved all of us.”

  “I, oh, see,” Wendy said, nodding, as if the mysteries of the universe had suddenly all become clear.

  “Well anyway, Wendy.” Louis’s smile vanished. “It was nice to see you again. Take care of yourself.”

  “I’ve always had to.” Her reply implied something that Sophie could not fathom, except that it was barbed with just a hint of resentment. “Good-bye, Louis.”

  She stood there looking at Louis for a second longer than Sophie deemed appropriate and then made her way out through the crowds.

  “What a charming lady,” Sophie said, exchanging a knowing look with Bella.

  “Who was that funny lady?” Izzy asked, emerging from her food and slinging an arm around Sophie’s neck to kiss her, leaving a tomato-ketchup kiss on her cheek.

  “She was a rude lady,” Bella said. “I didn’t like her.”

  “She’s just someone I used to know,” Louis said as he watched her go, but there was a look in his eyes that belied his casual dismissal of her, a look that reminded Sophie of the fact that she knew hardly anything about Louis’s life before Carrie. He never talked about it. There were years, decades, of his life that were a mystery to her.

  “When I knew her, she never used to be quite that intense.” Louis leaned over and wiped away the smear of ketchup from Sophie’s cheek with the ball of his thumb. “I’m sorry, Soph. She was pretty rude to you, ignoring you like that.”

  “Was she? I didn’t notice,” Sophie lied, more interested in finding out about this relic from Louis’s past. “Childhood sweetheart,
was she? She’s probably been pining for you all these years and is put out that you’re with me. Pure jealousy, and who can blame her, hey, bridesmaids?”

  As Sophie expected, the word sent the girls into paroxysms of hysteria and the Wendy interlude was soon forgotten as Louis had to catch Izzy as she raced around the pub in excitement, her loo paper bridal train fluttering behind her.

  That afternoon back at Louis’s house, the electric fire on and the lights blazing against the driving rain that pelted the house’s whitewashed pebbled exterior, Sophie sat near her cat Artemis and waited for Louis to come back from the kitchen with a cup of tea for her. She would have liked to sit next to Artemis, but she’d learned, after many claw-related injuries, that you never approached the cat, you waited for the cat to approach you, and this afternoon Artemis was clearly not in the mood. So Sophie sat near her and missed her because she loved her cat even if she knew her cat could mostly take her or leave her.

  The girls had gone upstairs to draw some designs for Sophie’s wedding dress, dragging poor old Tango with them just in case they needed a mannequin to model dresses on, and Sophie was glad of a few moments’ peace even though she wasn’t sure about being considered the same body type as a blatantly tubby ginger tom.

  “I’m glad you’re happy here without me,” she told Artemis, who tucked her two gray paws neatly beneath her and blinked in response. “I mean, I wouldn’t want you to miss me, or pine for me, or go off your food just because I gave you a home when no one else wanted a psychotic, antisocial cat and we shared a flat for years and years. I’m glad you’re emotionally independent.”

  Artemis regarded her with a long, flat stare that Sophie was reasonably sure said “If you haven’t got any food with you, you might as well leave.”

  “What do you think about this Wendy woman then?” Sophie asked Artemis. “She fluttered all over Louis today, acting all weird and mysterious, and she was acting that way, I didn’t imagine it. And he …he gave her this funny little look. This wistful look, what was that all about? Who was she to him? I have no idea. That’s the trouble. I haven’t got a clue. I mean, what do I really know about him or his life before he met Carrie? He never talks about it.”

  “About what?” Louis said as he came in carefully carrying two mugs of hot tea. “And why are you talking to that cat?”

  “She understands every word,” Sophie protested weakly.

  “Yes, but she doesn’t give a toss. If you want to talk to a dumb animal, you should try me. I hang on your every word.” He sat on the carpet and leaned his back against the sofa, his shoulder brushing Sophie’s knee. The glow of the fire tinted his complexion a ruddy orange as he passed her her drink.

  “Okay then,” Sophie said, taking a sip of her tea. “I asked Artemis, what do I know about you? I mean, I know that you’re lovely and an excellent kisser and fabulous in bed or on the sofa or whatever and that I love you, but what do I know about you? I know hardly anything about your family—”

  “Because I don’t really have one,” Louis said, exchanging glances with Artemis.

  “Or your past. I mean that Wendy from today, who was she?”

  Louis sipped his tea. “I told you. A girl I used to know at school.”

  “You were more than just friends she said while ignoring me,” Sophie added rather pointedly.

  “Oh god, I was sixteen, she was fifteen—it was that time when you’re going out with one girl at morning registration and she’s chucked you by afternoon break. Technically I was ‘more than just friends’ with half my class. The female half.”

  Louis laughed, but Sophie did not.

  “Come on, Soph,” Louis said, setting his tea down on the coffee table and kneeling to face her. “It’s just someone I used to know, it’s no big deal. I want to kiss you, I haven’t kissed you in at least two hours; I’m going through withdrawal.”

  One hand slid up her thigh as he took her drink from her and moved in to kiss her.

  “No …Louis, wait,” Sophie said. Louis waited, looking mildly surprised.

  “What, you don’t want the cat watching? I have to admit, she’s putting me off a bit too,” Louis said, glancing over his shoulder at Artemis who, if she’d had lips, would have been pursing them in matronly disapproval.

  “No, listen.” Sophie put her palms on either side of his cheeks and made him look at her. “You and I are engaged. To be married and stuff.”

  “Yes.” Louis smiled. “It’s great, isn’t it? Especially the stuff bit.”

  “Yes, it’s lovely, but I don’t know anything about you. Your life before you met Carrie is a complete mystery to me. And I want to know, I want to know all about you, every little thing, from your first memory onward, because it’s all part of what makes you you and I love you and I think if I know more about you, I’ll feel more …secure.”

  “Secure? I’ve just asked you to marry me. How secure do you need to feel?” Louis asked her, perplexed.

  “All right, not secure then—closer to you. The more I know about you, the closer I feel to you.”

  “I’ve often found that naked kissing and stuff is the best way to achieve that.” Louis’s lips curled into a smile, but Sophie was adamant.

  “No, no kissing. I want to know, tell me about her. Tell me about Wendy, please.”

  Louis sat back on his heels and sighed.

  “Fine,” he said with a shrug. “You want to know about Wendy. Well, Wendy was my first proper girlfriend, my first love, I suppose. I’d had this crush on her from the minute I set eyes on her when she first arrived at our school. I was thirteen and she was twelve. This gingery hair and …well, she was the first girl in her year to have curves, put it that way. I saw her and I thought, that’s her, that’s the girl I’m going to marry one day.”

  “Oh.” Sophie was taken aback by the sudden flare of jealousy in her chest. “And?”

  “And?” Louis shrugged. “And that’s it. Wendy was my first love. Who was your first love?”

  Sophie thought for a moment, but just then she didn’t want to tell Louis that it was him. “That can’t be it, you met her when you were thirteen, but you knew her for at least three more years. What happened next?”

  “Do you want a daily or monthly account?” Louis’s tone was sardonic. “Only it was a long time ago and I might have forgotten some of the details. How many sugars she had in her tea—that sort of thing.”

  “Louis, I’m serious!” Sophie told him, trying to wrestle the frustrated tone out of her voice. “You went out with her, for how long and when?”

  Louis sighed and stood up, crossing over to the armchair where Artemis was perched. The two of them regarded each other for a second like gunfighters in a spaghetti western and then, realizing who was by far the more superior animal, Louis sat down on the floor in front of the fire, crossing his legs like a schoolboy on a camping trip.

  “So I carried a torch for her.” Louis smiled to himself. “God, I loved her. She never talked to me, never looked at me. We weren’t in any of the same classes or anything, so I had to try and bump into her in places where I thought she might be. I remember once walking round and round this park near her house, until it got dark, on the off chance she might turn up, but she never showed.”

  “Which park?” Sophie asked him, hungry for details so she could more clearly picture the lovesick thirteen-year-old Louis. “The one near the guildhall?”

  “What? No, no, this was in Newquay. Wendy and I grew up in Newquay.”

  “Did you?” Sophie asked him. “I never knew that about you.”

  “It’s not that important, is it?” Louis asked her. “It’s just a place. I don’t think about it as home, this place is home. Wherever you are is home, which is why it would be so much better if you moved in here with me.”

  “Tell me what happened next. How did you get together?” Sophie pressed him, even though her heart shied away from knowing. Louis’s answering smile was fond and full of warmth.

  “We were b
oth at the end-of-year party; I knew she was going to be there and I knew that might be the last chance I’d have to talk to her. I was leaving school and it was the summer holidays. I gave myself a deadline—I’d either tell her I loved her that night or never at all, typical teen dramatics. It sounds silly now, but when I think about it, I can still feel it, that tight band around my chest whenever I thought about her or looked at her. Wendy and those red curls and the way that—” Louis caught the look on Sophie’s face that matched the thunderous skies outside the window and caught himself. “Anyway, I was very nervous—this was my moment of truth. I decided to have a drink for Dutch courage, and another one and another one. Four pints of cider on an empty stomach while I was waiting for the right moment, the moment when I felt brave and handsome enough to talk to her. Only, if it ever came, it was lost somewhere between being petrified and incoherent and utterly drunk. I passed out on a bench. When I woke up the party was over, my head was banging like a drum, and I hadn’t said two words to the girl I loved.” Sophie watched as Louis’s gaze slipped from her face, looking instead into his past. “God, I was gutted, I missed my moment, I’d blown it. I realized I’d have to live the rest of my life without her. Eventually I decided to walk home, and out of habit I suppose I took a detour past her house, probably to get one last look at her window. Only, when I turned down her road, she was there sitting on the wall outside her house, smoking a cigarette.

  “ ‘You took your time,’ she said as I walked up to her, really, really hoping I wasn’t going to throw up again. ‘I’ve been waiting here all night, I was just about to go in before my mum and dad realize there are pillows under my quilt and not me.’ “

  Louis grinned to himself. “I was all over the place, not entirely sure I wasn’t still on that bench and dreaming. So I asked her, ‘How did you know I was going to come?’ And she goes all cool as a cucumber. ‘You always walk home past my house, I didn’t suppose tonight would be any different. Never once knocked on my door though, so I thought I’d better sit out here waiting for you or else you’d never get round to asking me out.’