“Not everyone breeds as early as your family Gareth. Idris was old when Beverley was born, very old for the time, over 50. Her mother was 45. She was a bit of a miracle baby, apparently.”
“I still don’t get it though. If Beverley really is my great-aunt, why not just send me an email and introduce herself?”
“You’d think! I did suggest that to her but she said it wouldn’t work. The thing is, Beverley worked out that Idris wasn’t just her father, he was also Davey’s father. She’d been going through her dad’s old papers and found some crumpled old letter from Maggie thanking Idris for giving her a baby. Seems Tommy was shooting blanks and she’d asked Idris to step in and do the deed. There was another letter from Gwen, the last one she ever wrote to Idris, because Maggie spilled the beans to Tommy on her deathbed and the family cut off all contact with him after that.”
Gareth thinks for a while. He fights the lawyer’s urge to get out a pen and a piece of paper and take notes. “It still doesn’t make sense. Why not be upfront with me? I don’t think that at his time of life Davey is going to mind that his father was actually his uncle and vice versa, he’s just chuffed to still be around to enjoy life. I like Beverley! I admire her. I would have been glad to get an email with news of a long lost relative.”
“I haven’t told you everything yet.”
“Get on it with then.”
“Beverley didn’t want to find you because she needed a bigger family. She wanted to find you because she wants something from you. And she didn’t think that just popping up as a long lost member of the Maddox family was going to get her what she wanted in time. So we came up with a plan. A plan where you’d get to know her, get to like her, before you felt any duty or obligation to us. It had to be me who came over to Wales to meet with you and then come up with a plan to get you to come to Toronto.”
“Why did it have to be you? Why didn’t Beverley come and just leave you out of it?”
“Beverley’s not well enough to travel. She’s sick. With leukaemia. She urgently needs a bone marrow transplant. She’s got no family – parents dead, no surviving siblings, no cousins. I’m not a match and none of our friends who’ve come forward to be tested are matches either. She thinks there’s a chance – only a slim one at that because the family relationship isn’t ideally close enough – that one of your family might be a match and might be willing to donate.”
Gareth is stunned. He says nothing for a while.
“But why not just ask? Why not just say – your great grandfather is my great grandfather, too, and I would like to meet you as I have a favour to ask.”
“She didn’t have enough time for family bonding. Be honest Gareth, if you’d got that sort of email from someone you didn’t know how much time out of your busy life would you have made available just because you share an ancestor? Beverley’s been in business a long time. She knows how lawyers will put themselves out to land instructions on a big deal and earn a fat fee. She knew that the quickest, most direct route to you was to buy your time.”
“So the whole factory idea is a fiction? Made up to get to me?”
“A little at first, but not now. We had been considering expanding our manufacturing base into Europe for some time. When we were trying to come up with a reason for reaching out to you, it seemed a good cover. But the more we worked up the idea, the more Beverley liked it and wanted it to actually happen. We both thought her old man would have liked the idea of her opening a factory in the Rhondda.”
“You met him?”
“I did. Only a few times. He was 90 something when I first met Beverley. Her mom had not long since died and Idris was refusing to leave his house and move into a senior’s home. He was riddled with arthritis and not very mobile but still sharp as a tack, still spoke with a Welsh accent. Beverley employed a couple of nurses to look after him at home and went to see him most weekends but he didn’t last too long after Jean had gone. Six months or so. They’d been married 60 years by the time she died. Beverley said that after her mom went he just missed her too much to keep going.”
“And you and me, what’s that about?”
“This was down to me, nothing to do with Beverley. She knows nothing about it. I wasn’t convinced her plan would work so I thought if I engineered a little bit of making out between us that could be a back-up plan. I thought…” Cassandra takes a deep breath, “I thought if it turned out you weren’t willing to come forward for any of Beverley’s reasons, I could blackmail you a little, by threatening to tell your wife you’d come on to me.”
“So you and me – all this,” Gareth points at Cassandra and then at himself, “this was all just part of the set-up?”
“No!” Cassandra gets out of the bed and, still naked, walks over to where he is sitting. She tries to put her arms around him. He shrugs her off.
“Right at the very beginning it was. When I was making eyes at you, the first time I met you, that was part of the set-up. I wasn’t meant to find you attractive Gareth, I just wanted you to find me attractive. I hadn’t had any interest in men for years. I wasn’t meant to enjoy kissing you or to really, really want to sleep with you. Beverley has been sick a long time, she stopped wanting sex a while ago, and I was prepared to accept that, and the thought of cheating on her never crossed my mind. But then after I met you, all I could think about was you. Ever since that night outside the pub when we kissed the first time. How I feel about you is very real.”
“Am I meant to believe that? You’ve been telling me lies since I met you, why should I believe you?”
“Because you feel it too! I know you do. When we’re together, the connection is as strong for you as it is for me and the sex is off the scale. I can’t get enough of you. It has to be like that for you, or else it couldn’t possibly feel like that for me.”
“I don’t know what I feel anymore… Yes I do! I feel disgusted with myself and with you. Ashamed. Dirty. Guilty. All this emotion – this passion – you’ve been boiling up in me because you wanted a blackmail plan up your sleeve. Oh the irony! Because you can’t blackmail me now by threatening to tell my wife because she already fucking knows.”
“Well you can blackmail me then, because it will kill Beverley if she knows the truth.”
“I’m going out. I need some air.”
“It’s the middle of the night! Don’t believe all you read about Canada being a safe place. People still get mugged here, same as anywhere else.”
“Right now, getting mugged is the least of my worries.”
*
Rachel gathers herself. There is nothing else she can do. She has three young children in the house, plus her mother and her mother’s boyfriend and her teenage niece. Her nanny, Karen, will be arriving for work soon. She can’t let go and scream her head off as she’d like to, or smash all the windows in the kitchen or go upstairs and cut all Gareth’s suits in half with the garden shears. There are people to feed and things she must do.
So she puts the kettle on to make some tea and she toasts bagels for Nora and Jake. She goes upstairs and showers and cleans her teeth. By the time she goes back downstairs, all ready for work, her mother and Felix are sitting in the kitchen and there is fresh coffee being made. Rachel is surprised that she can still register the lovely smell of the coffee even through the fog of misery wrapped tight around her.
“Are you feeling all right dear,” Francesca asks. “You look a little peaky.”
“I’ve got a bit of a headache. Nothing too bad.”
“Shall I get you a paracetamol?”
“I’m fine Mum. Don’t fuss.”
“I wasn’t fussing Rachel! Just trying to help. Have you got much on today? Felix and I are popping to Cowbridge for the day but we can be back by 5pm and can take over from Karen if you’d like? Start the evening meal?”
“That’d be a great help, Mum, thank you.”
“Right you are then. Felix and I will pop into Waitrose. I do so love Waitrose.”
Rachel smi
les.
When Karen arrives Rachel quickly runs through with her what activities the children have planned that day and who needs to be where at what time. And then she picks up her jacket and her handbag and car keys and calls goodbye to everyone as she walks out the door. After she gets in the car, she calls work and tell them she has been ill overnight with sickness and diarrhoea and that she won’t be in today, probably not tomorrow either. Then she drives round to Jenny’s.
“What the fuck has happened to you?” Jenny asks taking one look at Rachel’s face.
“Are you working today?”
“No, day off, and Alastair has just taken Daniel round to a friend’s house for the day.”
“Good because I need you. Gareth is having an affair.”
“Don’t talk bollocks. Gareth thinks you’re made out of chocolate. He’d never cheat on you.”
“Well, he is.”
“You must be mistaken Rachel. You’ve got to be.”
Rachel tells her what happened that morning.
Jenny sucks air through her teeth. “That does not sound good. Not good at all. Have you tried calling him again?’
“Not for an hour or so.”
“Phone him again: now.”
She does. It goes straight to voicemail. Jenny grabs the phone out of Rachel’s hand and leaves a message
Gareth, this is Jenny. Ring Rachel as soon as you get this message.
“What do I do now, Jenny?”
“You don’t know anything for definite yet. You could be wrong. There could be a perfectly legitimate explanation.”
“For another woman being asleep next to my husband in bed in his hotel room?”
“I acknowledge it’s a long shot. But you’re the lawyer. You know better than anyone there’s always two sides to every story.”
“But he’s refusing to talk to me and tell me his side of the story, which suggests to me there really is only one side.”
“It’s still, like, 4am in the morning there isn’t it?
Rachel nods. “If he hasn’t contacted me in the meantime, I’m ringing Cassandra Taylor’s office as soon as it opens, 2pm our time, 9am theirs. But what the fuck do I do while I wait? Because if I don’t do something I am going to have a heart attack or something. For the first time today I understand why Grace and other teenagers cut themselves. I think pain would help right now, give me something to feel which is easier to bear than how absolutely wretched I feel inside. I’m so angry I can’t even cry.”
“I’m so sorry Rachel. Do you want a glass of gin?”
Rachel shakes her head. “Not just yet. Maybe a bit later. I want to be able to talk straight if and when the lying, fucking cheat rings me back.”
“I’ll put the kettle on, then.”
*
Gareth makes his way down to the Falls. It is just starting to get light. He is wearing only a T-shirt and jeans and he shivers in the cool night air coming off the thundering water. He’s glad he is cold and uncomfortable. It is the least he deserves. He leans on the iron railings for a very long time staring at the tons of water, cascading endlessly, and tries to decide what to do.
Finally, he rings Rachel. She answers the phone calmly and coldly.
“Hello, you lying, fucking cheat.”
“I take it you can speak then?”
“I’m not in work. Called in sick. I’m at Jenny’s. Was that Cassandra Taylor I saw in bed with you?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you been sleeping with her?”
“One night before she went back to Toronto and since I’ve been here.”
“Does Eloise know?”
“Of course not. Look, I’m coming home today, as soon as I can get a flight. I need to explain myself in person, not over the phone.”
Rachel says nothing.
“Rachel, did you hear what I said? I’m flying home later today.”
“I heard you. Bring Eloise with you, she can’t stay living in that woman’s apartment, working for the bitch. I don’t want my daughter having anything to do with her. ”
“I’m not bringing Eloise home Rachel. She and Liam are having the time of their lives. The apartment belongs to Cassandra’s business partner anyway, Beverley, and it’s Beverley that she’s interning with.”
“I don’t care, bring her home.”
“I’m not going to do that Rachel. You can’t take this away from Eloise just because of what I’ve done. You can’t put your feelings in front of her interests.”
“That’s fucking rich, coming from you.”
“I do realise that. I’ll see you later.”
Rachel hangs up. “I’ll have that glass of gin now, Jen. A big one.”
Chapter 30
Gareth walks back to the hotel room, cold to his bones. When he lets himself in, Cassandra is sitting up in the bed, hugging her knees.
“Thank goodness, I was worried about you. Where have you been?” She lifts the bedcovers, inviting him to get back into bed with her. Gareth shakes his head.
“I’ve been freezing myself down by the Falls, trying to come up with a story that Rachel might buy. Or at least one that she might pretend to buy. I thought perhaps I could tell her she’d been mistaken, that it was dark and all she’d seen was pillows bunched up in bed next to me not a person. Or I could tell her that you’d drunk too much on an empty stomach and been sick in a bar and I’d brought you back to my room to crash on the bed and I’d slept on the floor. I could have made you telephone Rachel and confirm that story. Take a leaf out of your book and blackmail you by threatening to tell Beverley about you and me if you didn’t do as I said.”
“If that’s what you want, then I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you say.”
“No need. I’ve already called Rachel. Admitted it was you she saw and that we’ve been sleeping together.”
“Why on earth did you do that?”
“Because after I’d thought about it for all of five minutes, I knew she wouldn’t believe me. Even if she really wanted to. She’s too clever for that. She would have worried it round in her mind, night after night, like she does when she’s got some legal question she needs to resolve, and she would have asked me questions and eventually she would have got it out of me.”
“You could have at least tried lying first. There are plenty of relationships out there still going strong because one party decided to turn a blind eye to the truth.”
“You might have been able to do that, being, as I’ve found out to my cost, a liar of Olympic gold medal standard. But I don’t want to live like that. However normal I pretended things were, one day, sooner or later, my time would be up. And I wouldn’t just be unfaithful but a liar too. I’m glad I didn’t try that anyway. She already knew it was you she saw.”
“She can’t have known for definite. Not 100 per cent. You could have got away with that.”
“You clearly don’t know me at all and you certainly don’t know my wife. I’m going home now to face the music. I’m getting in the shower and when I come out I want you to drive me back to Toronto to fetch my passport and stuff from the hotel. I’ll get a cab to the airport.”
“If you’re sure that’s what you want.”
“It is. I’ll call Eloise from the cab and tell her I got through everything I needed to do here and wanted to get back home. Tell Beverley whatever you need to tell her but I don’t want anyone saying anything to Eloise about us being related or leukaemia or anything at all about this whole ridiculous situation. Not yet.”
He opens the door to the bathroom. Before he walks in, he pauses: “How on earth did you think this thing was going to turn out, Cassie? When Beverley finally judged it the right time to tell me about the family connection, how did you imagine I was going to react?”
“I wasn’t thinking at all, that’s the problem, right there. I wanted to be with you so much that I completely ignored reality and just enjoyed the moments. How did you think it was going to turn out? That you’d leave Rachel and
your children and we’d ride off into the sunset together?”
“I hadn’t quite reached that point yet, but the more time I spent with you, the more I wanted to spend time with you. I don’t think it’s possible to love two people, to really love them mind, body and soul and yearn to be with them. Not both at the same time. I was falling in love with you Cassandra. I must have been falling out of love with Rachel.”
“I was falling in love with you too, but I could never leave Beverley, not after she’s been so ill. Can’t we carry on as we are? Seeing each other in secret? I can find excuses to be in London on a regular basis, find excuses to get you out here.”
“You really do take the biscuit Cassie. I was falling in love with you before I knew the whole thing had started off as a fucking set up. Before I knew the kind of person you really are. That you scheme and you use people. I have no intention of carrying on a transatlantic affair with – let me get this right now – my great aunt’s girlfriend – who made me think she fancied me so she could blackmail me. No thanks.”
*
Rachel sips at the gin and tonic that Jenny has brought her.
“That doesn’t taste anywhere near as nice this time of the morning as it does after work,” she informs Jenny.
“Do you want a cup of tea instead?”
“No, it’s OK, I’ll push through.”
They sit for a while together in silence while Rachel takes small sips of gin and Jenny looks on anxiously, her hands wrapped round a mug of tea.
“What did he say?” Jenny asks finally.
“That, as I suspected, he’s been sleeping with his client.”
“Has it been going on long?”
“Not long, a couple of weeks maybe.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Get drunk. Maybe have a good cry in a bit when I feel less numb.”
“I didn’t mean what are you going to do right this minute. What are you going to do later on, when Gareth gets home? Can you forgive him?”
“He didn’t actually say he wanted to be forgiven. All he said was that he needed to explain himself to me in person.”
Thicker Than Water Page 28