The Accidental Family

by Rowan Coleman

  Cal looked up at her. “Frankly, yes,” he said. “No …look, of course I’m not. I’m here for you, Sophie. I am just tired and I really need a nice, long, cool, and very alcoholic drink.”

  “We could always get in a cab and go somewhere bigger,” Carmen suggested tentatively. “Penzance is only a fifteen-minute drive away, but I’m not sure it will be that much fun this time of year— how about we go crazy and go to Newquay? There are loads of clubs in Newquay and, after all, this is your hen night, Soph. We need to find you some action.”

  “Newquay?” Sophie repeated. “That’s where Louis is though. If I go to Newquay for my henless hen night, he’ll think I’m following him around and that I don’t trust him anywhere near his manipulative, scheming ex.”

  “Well, yes he would if you went to Newquay to go round to her house and invite yourself in,” Carmen said, rolling her eyes at Cal. “But I’m not suggesting we do that.”

  “Oh, aren’t you?” Sophie sounded a little disappointed.

  “Cal’s come a long way, and all of us need to have our minds taken off certain things, you off the love child …”

  “Me off my nonexistent love life,” Cal added.

  “And me off …well, off of baking cakes for god’s sake,” Carmen said, looking around for something to blame. “If I sift another tablespoonful of icing sugar, I’m going to kill myself.”

  “I’m not wearing nearly the right thing for Newquay,” Sophie said, looking down at her jeans and sneakers.

  Cal said, “Look, let’s go back to the B and B, I can have a shower, and then we’ll bling up and blast off, whaddayasay?”

  “Okay,” Sophie said, but she knew even then, even before Cal had got back to the B & B and poured her into a pale blue silk shift dress and silver sling backs, that the evening was bound to end in a disaster of some kind. Except she could never have imagined exactly how disastrous it would be.

  Ten

  Sophie never remembered that she didn’t like nightclubs until she was in one. And then she realized that she hadn’t ever really enjoyed them, not even when she was twenty-two and actually knew the music that was playing. Now she felt rather inclined to say to anyone who might listen, if they could hear her over the din, that the music was too loud and the lyrics didn’t make any sense. Besides, there seemed to be only two reasons that Sophie could discern to go to a large room full of men wearing tucked-in shirts and hearing bad music. One was to find a random person to have sex with, which she had never before been disposed to do and was certainly not interested in doing now, and the other was getting really, really drunk, which led to a subcategory of reasons that came under the general heading “Things I Want to Forget.”

  The really annoying thing was that as soon as Sophie was in possession of her large vodka and Red Bull, she didn’t seem to want to drink it. Perhaps it was having one éclair too many at Ye Olde Tea Shoppe earlier, but even one sip of the drink made her stomach churn. So not only was she rubbish at being in nightclubs, it seemed that she was also a failure at drinking to forget, which just about summed up her life at the moment. She was not even good at being bad.

  Earlier, while he had been doing her makeup, Cal had said it seemed that loving Louis meant embracing his baggage too, and that she had to work out how and if she was able to do that.

  “The trouble is,” she’d told him, “sometimes I’ll feel rather put out that I have almost zero baggage for Louis to embrace. If our emotional baggage was actual baggage, then all I’d have for him to deal with would be a half-empty wash bag, while he’d have me carting around a full set of three suitcases and a massive trunk, one of the ones you could probably fit a body in.”

  “Well, that’s your own fault for living like a nun for so long,” Cal had said. “My point is that if you love Louis, then you have to love his baggage. You have to embrace it, you have to at least try.”

  Sophie watched Carmen and Cal dancing together as if they were about to find some dingy corner and have mad, crazy sex and they both looked great. Carmen had popped home while she and Cal had gone to the B & B and had reappeared later in a black backless halter top and skinny jeans topped off by a lovely pair of stilettos. When Carmen and Cal had snaked onto the dance floor of the Tall Trees Club and Bar, all eyes had followed them for at least a few seconds, and many stayed to watch them dancing. They made a great couple, rippling to the alien-sounding music as if they’d been partners all their lives, and when Carmen did indeed haul Cal up onto one of the podiums, there had even been a small burst of applause.

  Sophie sighed and twisted on her chrome bar stool so that her back was to the dance floor and concentrated on her drink. She really needed to get drunk; perhaps if she held her nose and downed it in one swallow. Her stomach churned at the thought of it.

  “Buy you a drink?” Sophie dimly heard the offer being made as she stared at her glass wondering exactly what alcohol went well with an overindulgence in éclairs. A brandy perhaps? No, the thought of that actually made her want to vomit.

  “Hey, you, I said can I buy you a drink?”

  Belatedly Sophie realized that the offer was being made to her.

  “Who, me?” she said, looking up at a blunt-faced young man leaning on the bar and staring at her rather hard, like a dog who hoped that it could will a piece of meat off the table and into its jaws.

  “Don’t see anyone else here,” the man said. He smiled as he said it, but his smile lacked warmth. “It’s off-season, slim pickings.”

  “You know how to make a girl feel wanted,” Sophie said. She glanced back at the dance floor, where Carmen and Cal were nowhere to be seen. “Look, you don’t want to buy me a drink. I’m engaged, and besides, I’m here with my friends.”

  “I don’t care if you’re engaged.” The man shrugged. “And I can’t see your friends. Look, all I want is a laugh and a bit of fun. So let me buy you a drink. You won’t be sorry.” He transferred his hungry gaze to her bust, which was burgeoning beneath the silk with much more gusto than the dress had been designed for.

  “No thank you,” Sophie said.

  “Let me buy you a drink, I said.” He straightened up, and although he wasn’t much taller than Sophie was seated, he was stocky and his stance was threatening. “I only want to buy you a drink— where’s the harm in that?”

  “Don’t be a wanker, mate. Leave her alone.”

  For a moment, as Sophie caught a glimpse of her rescuer from out of the corner of her eye, she thought that somehow Louis had found out where she was and had come to find her. But of course it wasn’t Louis. Louis would never be seen dead in a place like this. It was Seth.

  “And what the hell’s it got to do with you?” The man poked Seth in the shoulder with a short, thick finger.

  “I’ll tell you what it’s got to do with me.” Seth leaned down until he was nose to nose with the man. “If you speak even one more word to either me or that woman, then I’m going to rip your head off, and if you don’t believe me, then try me, because I swear to you I’ve had the worst night of my life tonight and right now killing you and going to prison for it doesn’t seem like such a bad option.”

  Sophie gasped, her eyes wide, as she leaned back against the bar clutching her untouched drink, the condensation damp against the palm of her hand. She felt as if she should do something, say something, but as the two men faced each other she found herself glued to her chair by the gravity of Seth’s fury.

  The man stared hard, up into Seth’s eyes, and then, shaking his head, stepped away, picking up his bottle of beer.

  “She wasn’t worth it anyway,” he said, lumbering off into the darker recesses of the club.

  “Oh, my.” Sophie breathed out and reached to touch Seth’s shoulder, which was rock hard with tension. “Seth …Seth, look at me. Are you okay?”

  Seth turned to look at her and Sophie realized that he didn’t remember who she was. He really had just turned up to pick a fight with a man who might have been shorter than he was but who
could probably have put him in the hospital any day of the week if he’d wanted to.

  “How do you know my …oh, you’re the one from the wedding fair.”

  Sophie became anxious on discovering that the realization did not make him warm to her. The casual, flirty boy she had met then was gone, probably swimming around in the copious amounts of alcohol that it appeared Seth had consumed, no doubt hoping to forget that he’d just met his father for the first time.

  “Sophie, my name’s Sophie—I’m Louis’s fiancée—your dad’s—”

  “Don’t say it,” Seth said, spreading his fingers wide as he attempted to sit down on the stool next to Sophie, only finding his center of gravity after swaying first one way and then the other.

  “It must have been a shock,” Sophie said as Seth picked up her drink and polished it off in one gulp before gesturing to the barman to bring him another.

  “You could say that,” he said, glancing sideways at her. “I mean, look at him! He looks like a lowlife. He turns up at my mum’s house and just expects …I don’t know what he expects. Where the bloody hell has he been for the last twenty years? Nowhere, that’s where. I didn’t need a dad when I was a kid and I certainly don’t need one now that I’m a man. I don’t know what she’s playing at this time, I really don’t …”

  “Who do you mean—Wendy?” Sophie pressed him, as his eyes wandered back and forth without resting on any one thing. “What do you mean this time?”

  “It’s like I’m an adult now, right? So why does she still treat me like I’m a kid?” Seth asked her. “Springing that on me from out of nowhere when she could have talked to me, told me about him, maybe even asked me what I wanted for once—but no, it’s all about her. It always is. And he …Louis …just turns up like he thinks it’s going to be happy families. Screw that!”

  “Look, I know it must seem weird, but it’s not as if Louis knew anything about you before last week—”

  “He’s a wanker,” Seth said, lurching a little closer to her. “Why are you marrying him? Marry me, I’m younger and the sex will be better.”

  “Seth, you’re really drunk,” Sophie said, pushing him ever so gently back into an upright position. “Are you supposed to be staying at your mum’s tonight? Maybe you should get a cab back there.”

  “He’ll still be there,” Seth growled. “All over her. Bloody idiot.”

  Sophie felt herself tense with jealousy. Seth was drunk and angry, he didn’t mean what he was saying, but she couldn’t stop her body from reacting to it.

  “I’ll ring him if you like, see where he is. I just really think you need to go home, sleep this off, and give yourself a chance to think.”

  Seth looked at her for a long moment, his dark eyes searching hers. Sophie forced herself to continue meeting his gaze as he scrutinized her, feeling somehow that he was owed at least one person looking him in the eye.

  “Okay,” he said eventually. “But will you come outside with me? I’m not sure I’ll make it to the taxi rank in one piece.” His smile was sweet, youthful, and entirely his own. Louis had never smiled at her in that way. Perhaps he’d smiled at Wendy or even Carrie like that, but by the time she’d found him that expression had either faded or been worn away. Sophie guessed it must be the smile that had melted many a young woman’s heart, but she relented anyway. This would be good, her helping Seth. This would be a way to insert herself into this family drama so that she could be there for Louis to help and support him. Although as Seth put his arm around her shoulders and leaned his body weight into hers, Sophie realized that this was a particularly heavy piece of baggage.

  Outside, Seth leaned against a wall, his chin tipped up as he sucked in the cool night air. Keeping an eye on him, Sophie took a few steps over to the road to find a cab and ring Louis.

  The phone rang three times and then went straight to voice mail, which meant that Louis had rejected her call. She stood for a second looking at the phone and thought about calling him again, but if he rejected her call twice in a row, then she would be angry with him, and she still hadn’t had a chance to make things right after he’d left for Wendy’s earlier that afternoon, distanced from her because of her inability to deal like an adult with what was happening. If she could help Seth, if she could calm him down and persuade him to talk to his father, then that would show Louis she was sticking by him, no matter what his past threw at her, that she loved him come what may.

  One thing she could be certain of was that if Louis was rejecting her calls, then he was still with Wendy. And she didn’t think she could send Seth home while Louis was there.

  “Right,” she said, going back to Seth. “Where do you live? In a dorm or something?”

  “No,” Seth said. “I’ve got a house with my mates. In Falmouth, I go to art college there.” He peeled himself off the wall for a second and then, looking as if he were afraid he might fall, he pinned himself back against it.

  “I don’t feel so good,” he said, looking around him warily.

  Sophie thought for a moment. The way she looked at it, there were three options. She could put him in a cab back to Falmouth, but even if the cabdriver would take him the twenty-five or so miles, she wasn’t at all sure Seth would be able to remember where he lived or get there without incurring some vomit-related cleaning costs. Or she could send him back home to his mum’s anyway, even if seeing Louis again would make things much worse and more difficult for everyone. Briefly Sophie thought of accompanying Seth on this short journey to his mother’s house, delivering Wendy’s son back to her and reclaiming her fiancé at the same time, but as tempting as that was, she knew it wasn’t a good idea. The last thing Louis needed now was her turning up and demanding he come home with her. She had to give him space, and if while she was doing that she could somehow look after his son, then all the better.

  The third option was that she could take Seth back to the B & B. After all, Mrs. Alexander was at Louis’s house and Sophie knew there were quite a few rooms free. She could pay for a single room for Seth to sleep in, feed him coffee and Nurofen in the morning, and then once he’d sobered up try to talk to him about giving Louis another chance. For a few more moments Sophie thought hard about her plan, trying to detect any fatal flaws, but unable to see any she decided to take him back to the Avalon. After all, she was practically his stepmother. He was, in some small way, her responsibility, and by looking after him she was showing Louis that she cared.

  Sophie dialed Cal’s and then Carmen’s number; neither of them answered, so she left a message on Carmen’s phone telling her that she was going home and that she’d see them back at the B & B. She could have explained about taking Seth with her, but it would have taken a long time and he was gradually sliding down the wall, like one of those sticky little octopuses that used to be all the rage when she was at school.

  “Come on, you,” she said, hefting him up. “There’s a cab.”

  “Where’m going?” Seth asked her in a blur. “Don’t make me go back there, cos if he’s there I’ll—”

  “No, you’re coming back with me,” Sophie said.

  “Results,” Seth said, grinning at her as she folded him into a cab.

  “Not in that way. I live in a B and B. I’ll put you in one of the free rooms so you can sleep it off, and if you want we can talk in the morning.”

  “Or we could just kiss now,” Seth said, sliding his hand up her thigh as she got in the cab next to him. “I like older women, I like older women a lot.”

  “Seth.” Sophie removed his hand from her thigh. “Just so we are clear, I am absolutely, categorically in no way going to kiss you, ever.”

  “We’ll see,” Seth said, that same sweet smile curling his lips. And then he passed out.

  “That him?” Grace Tregowan asked Sophie as she deposited Seth with some difficulty and a minor back injury onto Mrs. Alexander’s rose-printed sofa in the sitting room. “The love child. He’s a looker, isn’t he? Perfect opportunity for you to trade up.”


  “Mrs. Tregowan!” Sophie exclaimed. “He’s barely more than a boy.”

  But still it was hard not to admire the sweep of his dark lashes as he lay there with his eyes closed, and the fullness of his lower lip, his mouth slightly open as he slept.

  “I tell you,” Grace said with a wink. “If I were sixty years younger, I’d teach him a thing or two …”

  “What are you still doing up anyway?” Sophie whispered as Grace padded after her into the kitchen in her pink fluffy slippers. Sophie planned to risk Mrs. Alexander’s disapproval by brewing a strong pot of coffee that was really only meant for the breakfast service (instant after 11 A.M. was the rule).

  “The older you get, the less you sleep,” Grace said. “I think it’s because you know that death is getting closer, and the closer it is, and the less of life you have left, the less of it you want to miss dreaming about times gone by.”

  “You are going to live forever,” Sophie said as Grace settled herself a little stiffly on one of Mrs. Alexander’s kitchen chairs. “Hot chocolate?” Sophie offered.

  “I shouldn’t,” Grace said, drawing her bed jacket a little tighter around her shoulders. “But that’s never stopped me before, so go on then.”

  As Sophie switched on the coffee percolator, she took the tub of chocolate powder down from the shelf and heaped several large spoonfuls into two of Mrs. Alexander’s mugs.

  “How are your wedding plans going?” Grace asked her. “Are you coping with all of the love-child shenanigans and the other thing too?”

  “The other thing?” Sophie asked as she took some milk out of the fridge.

  “The wondering. Wondering if you’re doing the right thing by marrying Louis. That thing.”