What Goes Down: An emotional must-read of love, loss and second chances

by Natalie K. Martin

  She began to imagine how this would look in a photograph, with the two of them sitting on the stairs, locked into their first kiss while she still clutched onto her drink. But, for the first time ever, she couldn’t hold onto it. The soft kiss she was drowning in made her think maybe this was something a camera could never capture anyway. Laurel let herself get lost in it, letting go of every thought until all that existed was the two of them.

  Forget photography. This was magic.

  SEPH

  Ten

  Seph turned away from the easel, concentrating on the phone in her hand. The link to an article titled Who’s your daddy? had stood out on her Twitter feed like a blinking neon sign. She clicked on it and, after reading the introduction, left her studio to head to the kitchen. It was well timed, anyway. Her intense bout of work over the last few days had so far produced five more paintings and she’d just been about to start her sixth. She’d made a promise to Janice to deliver, and was determined to stick to it.

  Seph walked into the kitchen and set about making a coffee and slice of toast while simultaneously reading the article. She quickly became absorbed, discovering that she was far from being alone. According to the article, she was just one in ten people who were not biologically related to the men they’d believed to be their father. One in ten. Could it really be that high? She pictured herself wedged inside a packed Tube carriage and tried to imagine that one tenth of everyone else in it would be able to relate to her exact situation, whether they were aware of it or not. She sipped her coffee, barely registering the taste of it as she read about the common reasons for such a deception. Some men hadn’t wanted to be involved and some simply had no idea they had a child in the first place. Some women had got pregnant by sperm donation, as the result of affairs or even after being raped.

  After finishing the article, Seph sat on the sofa and opened up her laptop, resting it on her knees. Her fingers trembled as she opened Google and started typing. She didn’t even have to finish the sentence - it was the third suggested term. Seph stared at the screen, astounded by the sheer number of results. Websites from Mumsnet to Reddit pointed her to forums where people had posted after discovering the truth about their real parentage. All of the posts described feelings of shock, disbelief, confusion and anger, and Seph identified with something in every single one of them.

  When Ben emerged from his editing suite some time later, she stopped reading and sat back in the sofa, rubbing at her eyes.

  ‘Have you been in there all this time?’ she asked.

  ‘Yup.’ Ben yawned and raised his arms above his head in a stretch.

  As had become habit, Seph had woken at the crack of dawn and quietly slipped out of bed to head to her studio and paint, leaving him deep in sleep. She’d assumed he’d taken the day off since she hadn’t noticed him going into his editing suite, or heard music blaring from it like she usually would.

  ‘I’m going to get some stuff from the shops,’ Ben said. ‘What do you think about chili for dinner? I thought we could give the work a rest tonight and watch a film or something.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘Are you actually going to eat it?’ He looked at her with his eyebrows raised. ‘‘Cause if not, I’ll just get a kebab or something.’

  Seph looked back at him, bemused. ‘What kind of question is that?’

  ‘You haven’t eaten anything in days.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, of course I have.’ She laughed a little, shaking her head.

  ‘Yesterday you had half a baked potato. All day.’

  ‘What are you, the food police?’ She laughed again, but this time it was more self-conscious than the first.

  ‘No, but you barely eat, you barely sleep. It’s kind of my job to notice stuff like that.’

  ‘I’ve been busy. In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve got a deadline,’ she replied, her hackles rising.

  ‘That doesn’t mean you have to starve yourself.’

  He was clearly unwilling to let the issue drop. Seph looked at him, standing by the fridge. His face was set into an expression of concern, or frustration. Maybe even both. In fact, it was a look that wasn’t far off from the one he’d given her the day they’d gone to Passing Clouds, when she’d accidentally bitten him. It was a look that made the face she could normally interpret like an open book appear unreadable. He obviously didn’t understand the drive that consumed her when she was in the flow. She might not be happy with her paintings but she still felt compelled to work. Doing something as mediocre as eating or sleeping longer than she really needed to just seemed like a waste of precious time.

  Seph looked at Ben again and a pang of guilt hit her chest. He didn’t understand the near obsessive need to just get things done that had taken over her lately, but she hated seeing that look on his face, and worse, being the cause of it. She’d much rather see the smiling, uplifting one that suited him better.

  She rolled her eyes and grinned, holding her hands up in surrender. ‘Okay, okay. Cook us some of your world famous chili and I promise I’ll eat it.’

  His face softened a little and Seph tried to shove away the feeling of knowing that, on some level, he was right. She wasn’t sleeping enough, wasn’t eating enough, wasn’t getting outside enough. She looked at the laptop screen again. Maybe she’d come across the article at the right time. It had forced her to take a break.

  ‘Hey,’ she said as Ben started scribbling on a scrap of paper. ‘I read an article earlier. Did you know that one in ten people find out that their dads are someone other than they thought?’

  He glanced up at her. ‘That many?’

  ‘Nuts, isn’t it? Listen to these.’ She opened a tab she’d saved in her web browser as he rooted through the fridge, compiling a shopping list. ‘I just found out that the person I’ve always called Dad isn’t my biological father. And this one: I’m thirty-nine years old and a mum of two, and I just found out my dad isn’t my real dad.’

  Seph empathised with them all, understanding what it felt like to have been lied to about something so fundamental. She felt their breath catching in their throats, the sting of their tears, the coldness of their shock. For some, it was all too much to handle and they’d cut ties with their mother and stepfather, finding the betrayal too much. For some, it had amounted to nothing - they’d either decided not to contact their biological father or had contacted them and decided not to pursue a relationship. But for others, it had led to the utopia-like outcome Ben had suggested, where they ended up with an extra dad who loved them. For those people, it had turned out to be a story with a happy ending.

  Seph thought back to her childhood, Sundays in particular. They’d been her favourite day of the week because she would be allowed to have breakfast on the sofa and watch a Disney film instead of at eating at the table. They were light and easy days, and when she thought back on them now, she saw them through an orange-yellow tint. It was the colour of marmalade on a knife she’d secretly lick, knowing she’d get into trouble if her mum or dad caught her. It was the colour of the toast crumbs that would be scattered in her lap, and the rays of sunlight that burst in through the windows in a way she’d never seen anywhere else. It was a colour she’d always associated with Sundays and family ever since.

  At first, finding out about Nico had made her dissect those memories to sniff out any hidden truths. She’d been tempted to dismiss them as lies, as if they’d been twisted in her imagination. She’d told herself that they couldn’t have been real. How could they be, when it was all based on a cover up? But now, she was beginning to think differently. Her memories might not have been based on the whole truth, but they were based on her truth. They were the things she’d experienced and held onto, things that, for her, were real. She might not have known the full story, but whoever knew the full story about anything?

  ‘So did you get some good advice from it all?’ Ben asked, closing the fridge door.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I wasn’t really looking for an
y.’

  Seph closed the laptop and set it down on the coffee table. She rubbed her eyes again. The questions that had been circling in her mind about whether to meet Nico couldn’t be answered by reading other peoples’ forum posts. She had to decide whether to make the next move, or let it go. Whether she should let whatever happened between him and her mum stop her from knowing him herself. It was a decision she had to make alone, and it was a tough one to call. There was no denying she was curious about him, but she’d been just fine before. What difference would it really make to her life if she did reach out to him?

  Ben grabbed his boots and came to sit next to her. ‘Did you paint today?’

  ‘I was going to, but then I got distracted with this. I think I’ve reached the limit of being able to put it off till later.’

  He squeezed the back of her neck and dropped a kiss onto her shoulder.

  Seph sighed and looked up at him. ‘What would you do if it were you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure if it’s possible to be hypothetical about a situation like this, but I guess I’d probably be more curious about him than not. What I do know, is that whatever decision you make will be the right one. For you.’

  Seph nodded as he pulled on his boots. ‘I’m going to do it. I’m going to contact him.’

  Ben stopped and looked at her. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep.’

  It sounded like a rash decision, because it was. She’d literally only just that second decided on it, but she was fed up of it all circling around in her head. Nico had written in his email that he’d tried to be part of her life before. Whether it was true or not, it made her feel overwhelmingly sad, because he had been there once. He’d sat her on his knee, held her and probably watched her sleep in her cot at night. He’d been a dad. He’d also written that he hadn’t wanted to leave, but that he’d had to. Why? What could’ve been so bad that he’d just up and leave?

  ‘Did you decide that just now?’ Ben asked, and she nodded in reply.

  ‘I have to. I can’t think about anything else and I’m exhausted. I need answers.’

  ‘And you think he’ll give them to you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘But if I don’t try, I never will.’

  All she knew, was that this whole thing had been nagging away at her for too long and her mind was starting to feel toxic, rotating like a defective merry-go-round. It had stalked her, niggling away in the back of her head and reminding her that no matter how many paintings she finished, she still had something even more serious to sort out. She couldn’t get the answers she needed from her mum. Contacting Nico himself was the only way.

  Seph waited until Ben wheeled his bicycle out of the front door to go to the supermarket before picking up her mobile. She’d been too nervous to do it with him there because she had no idea how the call would go. She could have just replied to Nico’s email but somehow, it felt like it would be cheating. Like it would be skirting around the issue and dragging things out even more. Besides, she simply didn’t have the patience to wait for a reply.

  She got up from the sofa, pulling her denim shirt down and smoothing her hands across the creases as she paced the living room. Maybe she should tell her mum and dad what she was about to do first. But, then again, it might all lead to nothing. For all she knew, she might call Nico and find that, actually, they had nothing to say to each other. Or she might hang up when he answered. Or he might. It was all so unknown and there was no point in worrying them just yet. And despite what her mum had said about them standing by her no matter what she chose to do, she knew that on some level that her parents would feel betrayed.

  Seph opened up Nico’s email, her eyes glued to her screen as she read it again for what felt like the billionth time. What would he sound like? Would he have an accent? A deep voice or a high one? A gravelly voice or a smooth one? She copied and pasted the phone number into her keyboard and held a hand over her rolling stomach. He probably wouldn’t answer anyway. He was probably busy, at work or driving or something.

  She walked slowly around the living room, her feet padding across the cool floorboards under her feet. Why was she suddenly so nervous that he wouldn’t answer when a week ago she hadn’t even known he’d existed?

  ‘Hello?’

  Seph stopped pacing as he answered and put her hand over her mouth. Could it really be him? He sounded much younger than she’d expected. Actually hearing his voice, the deep bass of it, the humanness of it suddenly gave her the urge to hang up the phone and run to the bathroom.

  ‘Hello?’ he asked again and Seph shook her head as if she were somehow trying to shake herself back into life.

  She gripped the phone a little tighter in her hand and pictured the man on the other end. She didn’t even know how she should address him. Should she call him Dad, or Nico? She turned away from the black and white photographs on the wall that her mum had taken and took a deep breath.

  ‘Hi, Nico? It’s Seph.’

  LAUREL

  Eleven

  July 1987

  Laurel lifted her head a few inches from the pillow. She could have sworn she’d just heard something but it had sounded far away. Maybe she’d dreamed it. She listened for a few seconds more, straining her ears against the silence before squishing her pillow back into shape. Just as she began drifting back into sleep she heard it again. The red digits of the alarm clock on her bedside table glowed in the darkness as she sat up. She scanned the room, letting her eyes adjust to the outline of furniture illuminated by the full moon outside.

  ‘Pssst.’

  Laurel climbed out of bed, frowning as she crept across the floor to the window. Her eyes widened. Nico’s Ford Escort was parked across the road, its metallic sheen glowing under the orange street lamp. Finally. It was exactly seven days since Tom’s party, and it had been the longest week of her life. Nico had promised to drive up early today so they’d have the whole evening together but instead, she’d spent hours looking out onto the empty space across the street where his car should’ve been.

  ‘Pssst.’

  She looked directly beneath her window and saw a figure, half hidden in the darkness. She didn’t need light, or to have seen his car to know it was him. From the moment they’d first kissed, she’d been overtaken with a feeling she’d never experienced before. It felt like a colony of butterflies had made a nest in her belly and all she had to do was think of Nico, with his soft lips and dark eyes, to make their wings beat and flutter. She opened her window and looked down at him, sending the colony into overdrive.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. The traffic was murder.’

  She looked out onto the street again. It was deserted and so silent that she could probably hear a pin drop from a mile away. Laurel glanced over her shoulder to check her bedroom door was still closed before looking back down at Nico.

  ‘My parents will kill you if they catch you.’

  ‘Then we’d better not get caught.’

  A smile spread across her face. Disappointment had set in by the time she’d reluctantly gone to bed. She’d been convinced that he wasn’t going to show up, but here he was, standing under her bedroom window like a modern-day Romeo.

  ‘Get dressed,’ Nico said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re going for a drive.’

  ‘Now? It’s almost two in the morning.’

  ‘Better get a move on, then.’

  Where the hell would they go at this time of night? There’d be hell to pay if her parents found out. She’d probably be grounded for the rest of her life. But Nico was finally here. Who knew if they’d have time to see each other over the next two days? Last weekend, after the party, he’d been so busy helping his dad with the restaurant that they’d only had a few snatched moments together.

  After a millisecond of weighing up the pros of spending time with him against the cons of the trouble she’d get into
if she were caught, she looked down at him and nodded.

  ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

  Laurel ducked back under the window and felt around on the floor to find the jeans she’d pulled off earlier. Nico was all she’d been able to think about since last weekend and she’d obsessively replayed everything over and over again in her head. She’d ached, remembering how they’d kissed outside her house with his hands in her hair and nothing but silence around them. She’d been so wrapped up in him that she hadn’t cared about the possibility of an insomniac nosy neighbour seeing them. All she’d known, was that she hadn’t wanted that kiss to end. Nothing else had mattered. It was like his kiss was an invitation to another world. His world. And all she’d done since was count down the minutes until she could dive right back into it.

  Her heart pounded as she yanked on her jeans. She daren’t turn her light on in case someone woke up, so she fumbled around on her desk to find her brush. Her hair probably looked like a bird’s nest and she hoped it was enough to quickly drag the brush through it and tuck it behind her ears. If only she could put on some foundation or, at the very least, a bit of lipstick, but she’d washed her make-up off before bed and if she tried to do it in the dark, she’d only end up looking like a clown. Instead, she pinched her cheeks to try and smooth out any creases from her pillow before rubbing the tips of her index fingers into the corners of her eyes to get rid of any crusty bits. Finally, she opened her bedside drawer to find her permanent stash of polo mints and popped one into her mouth. Her routine was improvised and imperfect, but it would have to do.

  Nerves tickled her as she pulled on her trainers. Laurel stood still for a few seconds, straining her hearing to make sure nobody was awake. She didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that her parents wouldn’t approve, especially not with her preparing to shimmy down the drainpipe.