by Imogen Clark
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Where? I’m not going to that bloody horrible pub.’
‘There’s a pizza place on the high street, if that suits.’ She wanted to make some snotty comment about it matching his high standards but she held back.
‘That’ll do.’ He looked her up and down, taking in her tired hoodie-and-jeans ensemble.
‘I’ll just get changed,’ she said before he had a chance to suggest it. Picking up the box, she carried it into the bedroom, tucked it behind the bed where it couldn’t be seen from the door and opened her wardrobe. The laundrette was another job on her list but her better jeans weren’t too bad and her blue top was clean. That would have to do. It was only River and, despite his fancy clothes and all his airs and graces, they both knew where he’d come from.
When had River started making her feel so inadequate? Maybe he always had and she hadn’t been switched on enough to notice? There must have been a time when he respected her. She was his mother, after all. And she was proud of him. He had done so well, you just had to look at him to see, despite the shaky start that she had provided, or possibly because of it. River had probably taken one look at the mess she’d made of her life and decided that he would do things differently. He didn’t have to make it quite so obvious that he was peering down at her, though.
She pulled a comb through her hair, trying to tease some volume into it, but without a great deal of success. A little bit of red lipstick completed the look. What was it Coco Chanel had said? ‘If you’re sad, add more lipstick, and attack.’ Well, she wasn’t sad right now but it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared.
When she went back into the lounge River hadn’t even risked sitting down.
‘Right. Shall we go?’ she said, heading straight for the door as if it had been him who had kept her waiting and not the other way around.
The restaurant, Giovanni’s, was stuck firmly in the twentieth century. The walls were panelled in wood stained dark by a rich patina made up of thousands of olive-oiled fingerprints. Yellowing photographs of fifties film stars hung at jaunty angles, illegible signatures scrawled across their faces. The tables were covered in red cloths and paper napkins sprouted from the wine glasses.
‘You have a booking?’ asked Giovanni or someone masquerading as him when they approached the desk. Clare shook her head.
‘No matter, no matter,’ the Italian said, and showed them to a booth in the far corner.
They sat and as he lit the candle Giovanni eyed them knowingly, like he had the measure of this relationship between an exhausted-looking middle-aged woman and this beautiful young man. ‘He’s my son, for God’s sake,’ Clare wanted to shout, but part of her was amused by what she suspected was going through the other man’s mind.
‘So, how’s work?’ she asked when they had ordered. She didn’t really understand what River did as a job – what parent did? Something in computers, she thought, but whenever she’d asked him about it she hadn’t listened properly to his answer. He ignored the question.
‘I saw the letter,’ he said.
Ha! She’d known it was him who had nicked it. She raised her eyebrow at him.
‘That letter was private,’ she replied.
‘Shouldn’t have left it lying around for anyone to read, then,’ he said. ‘So Grandpa Frank wasn’t actually Grandpa after all.’
Clare felt stung. ‘Of course he was. He was my father, whatever else might have happened. I don’t care who this Downing bloke was to Mum. It doesn’t change a thing.’
‘But it does, though, doesn’t it?’ said River, opening a paper packet of breadsticks, sniffing the contents and then putting it back into the bread basket. ‘There’s this money that he seems desperate to leave you for a start.’
That was River all over. Straight to the point. No messing. She’d give him three seconds before he—
‘How much is it, anyway?’
Bingo.
‘Oh, not much,’ she said without looking at him. ‘They did say but I can’t quite remember.’
Who did she think she was trying to kid? Honestly, she sounded like Dorothy.
River didn’t even challenge her. He just stared at her, eyebrows raised until she was forced to reply.
‘One point two million,’ she said under her breath. River whistled. ‘But there’s tax and shit to take off that. I won’t actually get anywhere near that much. A bit over half, I think. Well, if I did the test and he turned out to be my father, that is.’
River sat back in his chair and considered her through narrowed eyes.
‘But you are going to take the test?’ he said. ‘I mean, why wouldn’t you, not when there’s all that money up for grabs.’
Clare picked up the breadsticks that River had rejected and pulled one out, breaking off the end and putting it into her mouth. It was soft.
‘I haven’t decided yet,’ she said. ‘I’m still thinking about what to do.’
She hadn’t realised until this moment that she still hadn’t decided.
‘But, Mum, it’s a no-brainer. You take the test. If you’re not related then who cares, and if you are then it’s jackpot time.’
And was it that simple? Could she take the test and use the result simply to get her hands on the cash? Certainly the Clare of yesteryear would have done. When she was River’s age she might have gone straight from the solicitor’s office to the testing centre without giving it a second thought. But now . . .?
‘I’m not sure I want to know,’ she said quietly. ‘If Dad wasn’t my dad, I mean. If the others are only half-brothers and sisters.’
‘There’s no point worrying about those idiots,’ interrupted River. ‘What the hell have they ever done for us other than taking the moral high ground and looking down on us.’
This wasn’t true. Clare knew exactly how much they had all done for her and River and had continued to do even when she had made things impossible for them. They had stood behind her, if not quite shoulder to shoulder then certainly with a bucket and a blanket. River didn’t know how hard they’d tried to help over the years, but she did.
‘Don’t say that,’ she said. ‘Miriam and the others have been brilliant. They’ve looked out for me all my life, even when I made theirs hell.’
River scoffed. ‘That’s not how it looked from where I was sitting,’ he said. ‘Yes, they said all the right things, sent a bit of cash from time to time, but did any of them ever actually give us a roof over our heads? When we were crashing from hostel to B&B and back again, did any of them ever actually do anything that would help? Did they hell.’
Clare could understand how River thought this. They had never moved in with any of her family other than for the odd night here and there, but River didn’t know how many times they had offered a permanent home and how many times Clare had rejected them, generally with an insult and very little grace. She was ashamed of how she had behaved, how she had thrown their offers of help straight back at them. And taking this test, wouldn’t that be the final kick in the teeth? It would be like saying that she didn’t want to be part of their gang, that a windfall meant more to her than all the past fifty years. And really, truly, it didn’t.
Anna had said it didn’t matter what the results were, that nothing would change, but of course it would. If it turned out that they didn’t have the same father, then surely the sense of sibling responsibility that had made them do all that stuff would take a bit of a knock. None of that was her fault, of course, but she wasn’t sure she could live with it. When she had stopped drinking and managed to stay dry (apart from the wobble after the solicitors), she had begun to see things differently. She really wasn’t sure that she should go delving around in the past, especially when she might not be able to deal with what she found. And no amount of money was worth sending her back into the hell that she’d just got out of. Suddenly, and with a clarity that was totally alien to her, Clare knew exactly what she would do.
‘This is nothing to do with you, River,’ she said, lo
oking him straight in the eye. ‘It’s my decision and I’m not going to take the test.’
River sat forward in his chair so fast that it made her jump and she felt herself pulling away from him. ‘Like hell it is,’ he hissed. ‘It might have escaped your notice, but I am your son and I’m already pretty lacking in the relations department, you never being entirely sure who my father is and all that. So, if this means that I might actually not be as closely hitched to the few relations that I thought I had then I have a right to know. Are you even my mother? At this rate I’m going to end up with no family whatsoever.’
Just for a moment, the defensive, secretive boy that he had once been, that she had created, stared out at her fearfully, but then the adult River was back, with that confident, unemotional persona that he had built for himself without her help.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, shaking her head at him. ‘You know that I’m your mother. And your father? Well, there’s not much we can do about that. But the others – they are part of you whether you like it or not and I’m not about to stab them in the back for some stupid little inheritance.’
‘One point two million pounds is not some stupid little inheritance,’ said River. He was almost shouting now and people turned to look at them. ‘Think what you could do with that money. You could buy a house for a start and then you wouldn’t have to worry about renting some council shithole among all the other losers and dropouts.’
‘What’s wrong with my flat? I like it,’ Clare said defensively as the image of the girl next door and her incessant noise bounced up and down in her mind’s eye.
‘And you could invest some in me, in my business. Yes, I’m doing great by myself, but think what I could do with some real money behind me. And all you have to do is take a bloody DNA test. I mean, for God’s sake, Mum! How hard can it be?’
The waiter arrived with the pizzas and, sensing the tension, put them down and retreated without even brandishing his ludicrous black pepper mill.
‘I’m sorry but I’m not taking that test,’ Clare said. She surprised herself at how calmly her voice came out, how calm she felt. ‘I know that it’s a lot of money and that it might be useful but some things are just more important.’
Had she really just said that? Clare Bliss, wastrel, drunkard and general waste of space, was rejecting the possibility of a massive wad of cash for the greater good. Somewhere deep inside her, a tiny little drum was beating proudly. She’d got this. For once in her troubled existence she had made a decision based on more than what was right in front of her nose and she was doing the right thing. It felt good.
It felt so good that when River stood up and stormed out of the restaurant she still knew she was right and she even managed a little smile.
ANNA – 2017
I
‘She’s only gone and taken the test!’ Miriam shouted down the phone at Anna. Anna held the handset a little bit further from her ear. ‘After everything she said. All that rubbish about family being more important than cash. It obviously meant absolutely nothing to her. I don’t know why I expected anything different, really. I mean, leopards and spots and all that.’
Anna was struggling to find a response. ‘Are you sure?’ was the best she could do. She’d been certain that Clare would ignore StJohn Downing’s proposal. Actually, that wasn’t completely true. She couldn’t have called it either way when Clare first found out about the terms of StJohn Downing’s will, but there was something different about Clare now, an easiness, a sense of certainty. Clare was still unpredictable but it was like things had fallen into place for her and she knew who she was supposed to be. The flat, the job, all of it.
‘Do you know, I used to dream that I was adopted,’ Clare had said when the two of them had last spoken a couple of days earlier. ‘I know everyone does that, builds up stupid little fantasies that they don’t belong where they’ve ended up. I was certain, though. Do you remember when Dad broke that story about those boys who got muddled up at the hospital?’
Anna hadn’t but she’d nodded anyway, not wanting to break Clare’s flow. It was so rare, this intimacy. Anna hadn’t wanted to waste a second of it.
‘Well, that was what had obviously happened to me. In my head, anyway. I even got as far as the bloody hospital to ask them. Fuck knows what I’d have said. Was there another girl born the same day as me? Could I have her address so I could check out her family, see if it’s any better than mine?’
They had been walking along the towpath by the canal. When they’d been kids, this place had been out of bounds, too derelict, too dangerous. Now it had been cleared up with some environmental grant or other and the most dangerous thing likely to happen was getting knocked into the water by a passing runner. Anna had kept an eye on where she was putting her feet, just in case.
‘I invented myself a whole bloody life,’ Clare had continued, and Anna had felt her heart hurt both for the pain that Clare must have felt when they were growing up and for the fact that until now she’d never even noticed. ‘It was perfect: the life I would have had if they hadn’t sent me to the wrong bloody house.’
Clare had made a noise: a laugh, a sigh, Anna hadn’t been sure.
‘What was it like?’ she’d asked, not really wanting to hear about her sister’s fantasy life away from the rest of them but desperate to hang on to this new, open Clare for as long as she could. Clare had shrugged.
‘Christ, I can’t remember. Some bollocks. And now look at me with my dodgy genes. I might not have been that far off the mark.’
Clare had winked at Anna but she’d looked so hurt, so deeply crushed, that Anna had wanted to grab her sister and just hold her tight. Clare, however, must have seen something in her expression. Anna had hoped it wasn’t pity but whatever it was, Clare had pulled down the shutters and the moment was gone.
‘Anyway,’ Clare had continued as if nothing had been said, ‘I’ve decided. I’m not taking the fucking test.’
And that had been that. Discussion over. Anna supposed it was possible that she might have changed her mind again, must have done if what Miriam was saying was true. Swapping and changing was Clare all over, after all, and Anna shouldn’t really be surprised by a change of heart, but she was.
‘Of course I’m sure.’ Miriam was now shouting down the phone. ‘Like I’d make something like that up.’
The full implications of what Miriam was telling her started to dawn on Anna. If the test was positive, what would that mean for her? She found herself testing the two options in her mind to see how she might react to either. Did she fall in the Sebastian camp or the Miriam one? Should a diluting of their shared genes make a difference? No, and yet . . .
‘And?’ she asked.
‘And what?’ Miriam sounded tetchy and irritated and Anna wondered if she was trying to do two things at once.
‘And what were the results?’
‘Oh! Well, I don’t know that. She’s still waiting, apparently. It takes a few days to get them back from whichever lab they’ve gone to.’
All was not lost yet, then. There was still a chance that the result would be negative and they could go back to how they’d been before all this happened. Except, of course, the burden of her secret would be lifted. A negative test result would mean that their mother had had no need to worry, there needn’t have been a letter to hide and the last few years of crippling guilt could have been avoided. Marvellous. And, of course, there would be the small matter of knowing that Clare had been happy to abandon her family in favour of cash.
‘Did you go and see her at the flat?’ asked Anna. ‘Was she okay? No sign of any more drinking?’
Anna was surprised to feel her fingers crossing themselves unbidden.
‘What?’ said Miriam, clearly still distracted by something else. ‘Just put it in that corner out of the way,’ she added to whoever was distracting her. ‘No. I haven’t been back to the flat since that night we went. I bumped into River in town. He told me.’
&nb
sp; Ah. River. Anna hadn’t seen her nephew for a while but if he’d been around then it must only have been to see Clare. He rarely came back these days. Her mind skittered back to the self-contained boy that had come to stay with her all those years ago. Even then he’d been shaping his own way in life, knowing that if he didn’t he’d probably end up following his mother into that black abyss where she’d spent such a lot of her time. And it had worked for him. He’d made a good life for himself but he’d done it by focusing entirely on himself and his own needs. Still, who could blame him, really?
‘Listen,’ said Miriam. ‘It’s all happening here. New tiles being delivered. It’s a nightmare. I have to go. I’ll ring again soon. Can you check in with Clare? Have you got time? I’d do it myself but . . . No! Those are the wrong size. For God’s sake! Did no one read the order form? I’ve got to go, Anna . . .’
And with that Miriam abruptly cut the line. Anna yanked open the fridge door and, grabbing a bottle, she unscrewed the lid and poured herself a large glass of wine. She was cross. She’d believed Clare this time, had had faith in her, and yet again she’d been let down. She should have known better. Miriam was right. Clare was just Clare. She’d never given two hoots for the rest of them. She had done precisely as she pleased her whole life. Anna had been naive to think that anything would change now. The chance to get her hands on all that cash was clearly too tempting and Clare wouldn’t care what she had to go through to get there.
Anna knocked the wine back and poured herself a second glass.
CLARE – 2017
I
Was she too old to take up exercise, Clare wondered? Her running days were definitely behind her but she was pretty sure she could still manage something. She wasn’t that bloody old! The girls that she worked with did a spin class and made it sound, if not fun exactly then at least effective. There must be one nearby. She’d ask them where they went. Maybe she could even tag along one night.