I need to get out of here. I have three thousand pounds in my bank account. I’ll leave tomorrow. I’m finished here. They will never know my child. Never.
Rose Beam’s Diary
15th July 1985
This will be my last entry. I’m going to throw this diary away. I’m going to throw all of them away . . . I want nothing to remind me of this life. I’m done and I won’t ever come back. See ya.
Rose x
I spend over two hours looking through Mum’s diaries, hardly able to believe what I’m reading. This is how Mum’s heart broke? This man, my father, used her and left?
The words blur in front of me as I take in what happened. The only thing Mum ever told me was that my dad left us before I was born. Does he even know I exist? And Grandma. Her and Granddad Jack paid this Thom money to leave Mum. Because of their snobbishness. Because of the Beams’ reputation. It’s horrible. A wave of pity engulfs me. No wonder Mum didn’t trust people, no wonder she was so bitter and depressed. The people she trusted and loved most in the world did one over on her.
My heart hammers rapidly as I place the last of the diaries carefully back in the trunk. Coming up here was a bad idea. What did I expect to find? Why did I choose to look now, after all the drama that’s happened tonight? Jesus, my life is just one bad fucking decision after another.
I feel so angry. Angry at myself. Angry at Grandma. Now it makes sense why she’s been so cagey. Of course she doesn’t want me to know that it wasn’t just a man who broke Mum’s heart. It was her. Her and Jack. That’s what she was talking about when she said she was ‘redeeming herself’. She thought that by taking me in she could make it all better.
Adrenalin courses through my body, making me feel like I’m about to explode. And there I was thinking that Grandma might actually be OK. Feeling pleased that she was proud of me.
I fiddle absently with the cuff of my dressing gown and watch as the dust particles glisten in the light, flying all around me, never seeming to reach the floor. I think of my mum. Of growing up around somebody who never wanted to hug, never wanted to talk about love, cried so much, stayed indoors all the time. I think of sitting on the floor of the library when Pam called to tell me that Mum couldn’t even find it in her to face life any more.
Grandma lied to me. Big time.
On the way back down from the attic, I’m not quite so careful as on the way up, and I hit not just one creak, but three. Grandma dashes out of her bedroom, her silver hair a wild halo, a look of fright on her pale, wrinkled face. When she realizes it’s only me rather than a burglar, her taut face relaxes.
‘Oh, Jessica, you gave me a terrible fright! Goodness, how was the ball? Did you have a wonderful time?’ Then she realizes where I’ve just been. ‘Wait . . . what are you doing up there? I told you not—’
‘You lied to me,’ I cut in, stepping off the bottom rung of the ladder, my voice shaking. ‘You let me think that you had nothing to do with why my mum was so unhappy. But it was all your fault. Yours and Jack’s.’
Grandma sways slightly. ‘That’s not wha—’
‘I’ve just read her diaries! She was in love, properly in love, found her – her soulmate, and because you didn’t think he was up to your standards, your precious Beam fucking standards, you paid him to leave her. And she never ever got over it.’
‘Good grief,’ Grandma whispers, her bottom lip starting to tremble. ‘I was going to tell you.’
‘Oh really?’
‘Yes! I was going to explain everything. When the project was over.’
‘Ah, yes, your precious project. Well, congratulations! Leo Frost said he loved me, so, you know, hip, hip, hoorah. Only he found out what we’d been up to, how we’d been lying to him, and he’s devastated. I should never have trusted you.’
Grandma wrings her hands together. ‘After she left, Thomas came back.’
I blink. ‘What?’
‘He came back four days later to return the money. He told us he was in love with Rose and realized he’d made a mistake. Your grandfather sent him away. He lied, told him that Rose had decided to go and live with family in New York and that he must never, ever darken our doorway again. I felt horribly guilty.’
My throat aches with something, I’m not sure what it is. ‘My father came back and you never told her?’ I whisper in disbelief.
Grandma starts to sob even louder. I hate it. My first instinct is to make her feel better, but she doesn’t deserve it. Because of her snobbishness, my mother lived her whole life believing that the person she loved took money to abandon her. And he didn’t. He did love her. Maybe if she’d known, she wouldn’t have . . .
‘Jack forbade me to tell her. He was my husband. I had to listen to him.’
‘She was pregnant, for fuck’s sake!’
‘We didn’t know that until after we’d sent Thomas away. I only knew when I found Rose’s diaries in an untied rubbish bag behind the outside bins. By that time it was too late.’
I run my hands through my hair. I can’t believe it.
‘She lived her entire life believing a lie. It ruined her!’
‘I’m know, and I am sorry,’ Grandma cries. ‘I thought I knew what was best for my daughter. If she had only listened to my advice, she wouldn’t have got involved with such an unsavoury man in the first place. Let herself get pregnant out of wedlock!’
I shake my head. ‘You’re unbelievable,’ I spit, standing up. ‘I knew you were old-fashioned, but that’s just absurd. How can you not see how awful and judgemental that is?’
The back of my eyes sting. I need to get out of here.
‘It’s my biggest regret,’ Grandma says in a small voice. ‘The entire thing destroyed Jack. He started drinking heavily after Rose ran away, he lost control of Delightex, our entire fortune went, he became cold and distant. Her leaving with his grandchild, cutting all ties, refusing to even speak to us again . . . it shattered me, but it killed him. He had his heart attack less than two years later. Believe me, I’ve felt sorry for it every day of my life. I tracked Rose down after Jack passed. Found both of you in that tiny house in Manchester. When I got there, she screamed and lashed out at me. Said that if I loved her at all I would never contact her again. What could I do, Jessica? I didn’t know what to do. So I knocked on the door of your next-door neighbour—’
‘Nosy Mrs Farraway?’ I whisper.
‘Yes, Mrs Farraway. And I offered to pay her if she would send me monthly updates on how the two of you were faring. That’s how I found out that Rose had . . . that she had . . . ’ Grandma trails off, her face crumpled with upset.
I try to swallow, but there’s a huge lump in the way.
‘If you knew she’d died then why didn’t you come to her funeral?’ I ask, my voice cracking slightly with anguish. ‘Why did you never try to find me?’
‘I did go to her funeral.’
‘What? You’re lying. You didn’t.’
‘I did, Jessica. I was standing right at the back, behind the other guests. I saw you there with your friend. You were . . . a little worse for wear.’
I get a flashback to Mum’s funeral. How I drank half a bottle of tequila beforehand, how Summer basically had to help me stand upright. So wasted, I didn’t even know Matilda was there.
‘Why didn’t you come and talk to me?’ I spit. ‘Things could have been so different. I was alone. I had no one.’
The tears roll down Grandma’s face, plopping off one by one onto the collar of her cream dressing gown.
‘I wanted to, Jessica. I wanted to very much. But when your mum passed, I received a letter from her solicitor instructing that I should never try to make contact with you.’
‘Well, what do you call this?’ I scream, indicating the pair of us.
‘I didn’t seek you out. You came to me. I couldn’t turn you away. You needed someone.’
‘No, you needed someone. Someone to manipulate. Someone to do your bidding and do your stupid project. Well, congrat
ulations. It worked. I’ll write the book. Your house will be saved. Yippee for you.’
‘I don’t care about that. Maybe I did, but I don’t now. I only care about you.’
‘Someone who cared about me wouldn’t have put me in the situation I was in tonight. I feel like shit about what I’ve done to Leo. We’ve really hurt somebody.’
Grandma looks down at her shaking hands. She’s getting really distressed.
My stomach rolls and lurches horribly. ‘Look, I . . . I have to go.’
‘Where?’ Grandma says, horrified. ‘It’s half past four in the morning!’
‘Anywhere, just so long as it’s well away from you.’
Leaving her behind, I hurry to my room in a daze, grab my phone, and with shaking hands that keep missing the keys, dial the first number that comes to mind.
After four rings it answers.
‘Hello?’
‘Can I come stay the night?’ I ask without preamble.
‘Yes,’ is the simple, short reply. ‘Shall I pick you up?’
‘No, it’s fine. I’ll get a cab.’
I quickly call a taxi, grab my laptop, put on my trainers and race past a loudly sobbing Grandma to wait outside for the cab to take me away from here.
I just about make it out of the building when the tears I’ve been holding in for the past ten years finally start to fall.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Disappointment is inevitable in this life. But a Good Woman can overcome most things by weathering the storm with patience and good grace.
Matilda Beam’s Good Woman Guide, 1959
It’s weird, this crying business. It’s like Pringles – once you pop you can’t stop. And I literally cannot stop.
The taxi driver is polite enough to pretend that he doesn’t notice as I cry and snot and wail in the back seat. I don’t even have a tissue, so the sleeve of my dressing gown is now in a pretty gross state.
Eyes blurred with this onslaught of tears, I get out of the taxi at Edward Street, Bayswater, where Jamie is waiting outside his front door, huddled up in a blue towelling bathrobe. He looks at me in horror as I, in my dressing gown and trainers, hobble towards him, barely able to stand up because I’m crying so hard.
‘Jess? Are you hurt?’ he asks, leading me inside. ‘Are you in pain?’
Yes. And yes.
‘S-s-s-orry,’ I get out through shaky breaths. ‘I had a really bad n-night and haven’t cried in t-t-t-ten yeeeears, so there’s quite a l-lot of iiiiiit and it’s freaking me o-o-out.’
We enter a clean, plainly decorated living room, darkened by closed curtains.
‘Sit down,’ Jamie says, pointing to a floppy, comfy-looking couch. ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on.’
I plop onto the sofa, noticing a box of tissues on the low coffee table in front of me. I grab the entire box of tissues, plonk them on my lap, pull a load of them out and press them all over my wet face to dry the tears. I repeat this, as needed, until soon enough all the tissues are used up. ‘Bring some bog roll,’ I call to Jamie in the kitchen.
Jamie comes back from the kitchen holding two steaming mugs of tea and a loo roll under his arm. He stumbles slightly on the edge of the rug and a bit of tea falls onto his bare foot.
‘Ouch.’
I accept one of the mugs from him and take a big slurp. The tears are falling so fast that they plop, one after the other, into the tea. Putting the mug down onto the coffee table, I grab the loo roll from Jamie and use it for more face-mopping.
‘I’m sorry,’ I sigh shakily, ‘to wake you. I didn’t know who else to phone.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he shrugs, sitting down next to me, hands cupped around his mug, stifling a yawn. ‘So, you want to tell me what’s happened?’
I nod and take a deep breath. Then I tell Jamie the whole sorry story.
An entire roll of toilet tissue, three more cups of tea and an hour and a half later, I’ve told Jamie everything: about Mum, and my dad who I’ve just found out is called Thomas Truman and might not even know I exist, about Grandma lying to us. And then I tell him about the ball, about Leo finding out about the project, how he told me he loved me. I leave out the bit that I think I might love him too. When I’m finished, my face is almost red raw from the tears and my nose is full-on blocked.
‘What should I do?’ I ask Jamie. ‘I don’t want to feel like this. I’ve spent my whole life protecting myself from feeling like this. How do I make it stop? I need to make this crying stop. I hate it! I’m Gwyneth Paltrow!’
‘You just have to let it happen. You’ll stop crying when you’re ready.’
‘What?’ I say in horror, a fresh round of tears squeezing their way out. ‘That’s it? I just have to wait for it to stop on its own? I’m going to get dehydrated!’
Jamie smiles slightly, stands up and holds out his hand. ‘Come on.’
‘What? Where?’
‘Let’s go to bed.’
I goggle at him. I knew he was randy, but wanting a shag now, after everything I just told him?
‘To sleep,’ he adds, noticing my irritation. He yawns and I catch it, my mouth stretching sleepily.
‘Ugh,’ I groan.
‘You can’t sort any of this out until you’ve got some sleep,’ Jamie says kindly.
I nod, wipe my nose and follow him through a hallway and up some beige-carpeted stairs. From one of the rooms, I hear the sound of a bed squeaking along with a bunch of muffled sighs and moans.
‘My room-mates,’ Jamie grimaces. ‘They sometimes start early. Come on, I’ve got earplugs.’
Jamie’s room is large and clean, with blond hardwood floors and lots of medical textbooks lined up on Billy bookcases. It looks like a student bedroom, which, I suppose, is what it is, after all. I notice lots of pictures hung up above his desk. Pictures of Jamie with family members and friends, a few of him with his nephew Charlie. I feel a rumble of self-pity in my stomach. I wonder what it must have been like to grow up like that. Surrounded by a normal, loving, functional family.
Jamie takes off his dressing gown to reveal, underneath, his tartan boxer shorts and a grey T-shirt that says ‘Bazinga’ on it. He climbs into the bed and I crawl in beside him, noticing that the duvet cover smells nice, like washing powder. I curl up into him and he flings his arm over my body. It’s comforting and safe. Almost immediately he gets a boner.
I jump away and turn round. ‘Jamie!’ I scold, wiping my nose. ‘Inappropriate much?’
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Natural reaction.’
I sniff and turn back round, snuggling my head into the pillow.
‘Unless . . . it might make you feel a bit better?’ he adds.
He’s right. It probably would make me feel a bit better. Things are easy with Jamie. There are no weird whizzy feelings, no heart thumps and melting. No . . . love.
‘Thanks, Doc. But I just want to get some sleep.’
Jamie leans down and kisses the back of my head. He hands me a packet of neon-yellow earplugs, which I eagerly shove in to drown out the noise of his amorous roommates. Less than thirty seconds later, I’m asleep.
I wake up the next morning to the sound of my mobile ringing. My throat is raw but sore, my head is pounding. I feel like I’ve got a shitty hangover but I barely had anything to drink. I turn over, but Jamie isn’t there. I grab out onto the bedside table for my phone. It’s Valentina. Probably calling to see how the ball went. Shit.
‘Hey,’ I answer dazedly.
‘Jess, my lavender puff, how are you?’
‘Er . . . ’
‘Listen, I’m afraid I’ve got some rather upsetting news.’
I quickly sit up in the bed, which makes my head pound even harder. Ow.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Unfortunately, first thing this morning we received an injunction notice from Rufus Frost regarding How to Catch a Man Like It’s 1955.’
‘What? I don’t understand?’
Valentina’s voice comes cr
ystal clear through the speaker of my phone.
‘He has said that if we try to release the book, he will sue the Southbank Press.’
‘But . . . we weren’t going to use Leo’s actual name in the book?’
‘Yes, but we were going to imply it – he was our “eternal bachelor”. Which would have been fine, but now there’s a picture of you together in the Telegraph, and after his public declaration last night – which is on all the industry blogs and before you know it the gossip columns will stumble onto it – it will be clear who we’re talking about. I’m afraid it’s just not worth the hassle for us. And even if we could slip past it legally, Rufus has said that Davis Arthur Montblanc would never want to be part of a company who upset his nephew. And Davis Arthur Montblanc is our most important author.’
My stomach sinks. After everything that’s just happened, there’s not even going to be a book? This whole thing was for nothing?
‘I can’t fucking believe this,’ I mutter into the phone, feeling the tears well up again. ‘Why did you not think of this beforehand?’
‘I know, pickle. It’s such a pain. I had such plans for the book, and you did such an amazing job on the scoundrel.’
‘He’s not a scoundrel, Valentina,’ I respond angrily. ‘He told me what happened with you guys. He behaved badly, I know, but he apologized to you. You didn’t tell me that. And you conveniently forgot to mention that he was completely honest with you about not wanting anything serious. You let me believe that he was cruel and heartless when he wasn’t. He was just a bit of a tit. He didn’t deserve this.’
Valentina gasps. ‘I truly thought that How to Catch a Man Like It’s 1955 was a fantastic idea for a book,’ she retorts. ‘I still do. I make all my publishing decisions with nothing but absolute integrity. I’m highly offended that you, my beautiful protégée, would think that I—’
The Vintage Guide to Love and Romance Page 29