It was then I noticed what she was doing. She had the mysterious black clamshell phone open in front of her. X’s number was displayed on the screen and Mum’s finger was hanging over the green call key. The pained look on her face – the result of Dad’s betrayal – stirred demons within me; roused memories of my own guilt.
Then the phone rang and the pair of us nearly jumped through the ceiling in shock.
It wasn’t the clamshell, though; it was the landline. Mum had brought the cordless handset through from the lounge.
‘Hello?’ she said, answering it after taking a moment to compose herself. ‘Oh, hi, Lauren. How are you? Have you landed already?’
Ella appeared at the kitchen door as Mum hung up. ‘Was that the hospital? Is Grandad okay?’
‘It was Auntie Lauren, darling. She’s at the airport and about to get a taxi, so she’ll be here soon.’
‘How many minutes?’
‘Ooh, about forty-five, I’d say.’
‘Goody. Is she going to have tea with us?’
‘It’ll be a bit late by then. I’ve got fish fingers and chips in the oven for you. They’ll be ready in a few minutes.’
‘Yummy,’ she replied, grinning in my direction for a second before correcting herself and turning away.
Mum gestured for Ella to sit on her knee. She pulled her up and kissed her forehead. ‘Listen, you mustn’t worry about Grandad. Leave that to the adults.’
‘I don’t want him to die. That’s all.’
‘I know, Ella, but worrying about it won’t make a jot of difference. He is very poorly, but hopefully he’s through the worst.’
‘Have you got a new phone?’ Ella asked as the mobile on the table caught her eye.
Mum reached over, snapped it shut and stashed it in her trouser pocket. ‘No, no. It’s just an old one I was using for something.’
‘I’ll have it if you don’t want it any more. There’s a boy in my class who’s got his own mobile.’
Mum looked horrified. ‘A mobile phone? At six years old? Goodness me. Whatever next.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ella,’ I said, drawing a scowl. ‘You’re far too young to have a mobile and you shouldn’t be asking for one.’
Ella was finishing a bowl of chocolate ice cream when the front doorbell sounded. Lauren bustled in with two large suitcases and a tired, anxious look on her face.
‘Auntie Lauren,’ Ella said, sprinting over to her and squeezing her tightly around the waist.
‘My favourite niece,’ Lauren replied, picking her up and showering her with kisses.
‘I’m really glad you’re back,’ Ella said. ‘I missed you loads.’
‘Me too, sweetheart.’
‘Where’s Uncle Xander?’
‘He’s still in Holland. One of us had to stay behind to run the business.’
‘Grandad’s really poorly. He’s in hospital. He can’t talk properly. He got stroked.’
Lauren put her down, ruffling her hair. ‘I know. That’s why I’m here. As well as to see you, of course.’
You wait, sis, I thought. Dad’s stroke’s only half the story.
I wondered how long it would take Mum to tell Lauren about the secret mobile and Dad’s mystery lover. I suspected she might wait a bit. Over the years she and Dad had often tried to shelter the two of us from bad news. When I was in my early twenties, for instance, Mum had gone through a cancer scare, although it wasn’t until well after she’d been given the all-clear that she told Lauren and me. At the time I couldn’t understand why she’d not said anything earlier. But having my own child had opened my eyes.
As it turned out, Mum told Lauren everything later that night. She obviously needed someone to confide in. An hour or so after Ella had gone to bed, they were chatting over a glass of wine in the lounge under my watchful eye. Lauren asked Mum how she was coping; she burst into a flood of tears and the whole story came gushing out.
Lauren was as surprised as I was to learn that Dad had been cheating. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ she asked Mum. ‘Is there no other explanation? What if it’s not his phone? Perhaps he found it somewhere or was looking after it for someone.’
Mum, her face still bright red and glistening from all the crying, slowly shook her head. ‘She refers to him as Tom in some of the texts.’
‘That’s not conclusive proof,’ Lauren said half-heartedly, clutching at straws. ‘It’s a common name.’
Then Mum explained how she’d also noted some of the dates Dad and his mistress had arranged to meet and cross-referenced them with the calendar. ‘Several corresponded with supposed arrangements of his,’ she sighed. ‘Things he did alone, like having lunch with an old colleague or watching a cricket match.’
Lauren’s face hardened. ‘Oh.’
More tears flowed as Mum continued: ‘It’s the idea that he lied to me so much that hurts the most. I didn’t think he was capable of that. I thought I knew him better than anyone else and there he was living a sordid secret life behind my back.’
‘You poor thing, Mum. I can’t believe he’d do this to you; to all of us. It’s … disgusting.’
‘I didn’t know how to face him today. I delayed going to the hospital for as long as I could. Then when I got there, I stayed in the car for ages before building up the courage to go inside.’
‘And what did you say when you saw him?’
‘Nothing. He was asleep. I only stayed for a short while and left before he woke up. It’s so hard. I don’t know what to do. I want to shout and scream at him; to force him to explain himself. But how can I when he’s in such a state?’
‘How bad is he?’
‘Like I said on the phone, it was a major stroke. It’s affected most of his right side and his speech. God knows how long he’ll need caring for. He may never fully recover. I know that he needs me, but I’m completely lost, Lauren. I’m still mourning my son and doing my best to raise my granddaughter. How can I handle this too? It’s like God’s punishing me. I keep thinking that somehow I must have brought this all on myself.’
Lauren scowled. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mum. None of this is your fault.’
‘Maybe I’m a bad wife; a bad mother.’
‘No. You’re a wonderful wife and the best mum ever. There’s only one person at fault here and that’s Dad. If anyone’s got what they deserve, it’s him.’
I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard.
‘Don’t say that, Lauren,’ Mum replied. ‘Whatever he’s done, he doesn’t deserve this.’
‘Well, I’m not having anything to do with him,’ Lauren added, steely-eyed. ‘I’ll stay here to help you and Ella, but I’m not going to visit him. How could I, knowing what I do now? I’ll never forgive him.’
Mum stayed quiet. Like me, she probably thought Lauren needed time to calm down.
‘Who is she, anyway?’ my sister asked. ‘Who is this tart he’s having his dirty affair with?’
Mum explained that she didn’t know and hadn’t yet got up the courage to ring the number.
‘Why not? Where’s the phone? Give it to me. I’ll give that family wrecker a piece of my mind.’
Mum hesitated but eventually removed the phone from her pocket and handed it to Lauren. ‘What are you going to say?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll see what comes out when she answers.’
She stood up and flipped open the black clamshell. After taking a second to locate X’s number, she selected it. With no pause for thought, she jammed her thumb into the green dial button and held the phone up to her ear.
The whole room was silent and then Lauren erupted: ‘This is the daughter of Tom Curtis. I know you’ve been having an affair with my dad and I think you’re the scum of the earth. I’m calling to tell you that it’s over. For good. If you ever try to contact him again, I will hunt you down and make your life even more miserable than you’ve made ours. Don’t test me or, mark my words, you’ll be sorry. Leave. Him. Alone.’
Lauren swung her
hand away from her ear, slammed the mobile shut and tossed it on to the couch next to Mum. ‘Voicemail. Still don’t know who she is, but hopefully she’ll get the message and leave well alone now.’
Mum gaped back at her, aghast. ‘Lauren, what did you just do? I can’t believe what you said.’
‘It needed saying.’
‘But—’
‘But nothing. I sorted it. That’s all. We can still find out who she is, if you like. We can call again.’
‘You were so … aggressive,’ Mum said. ‘So threatening.’
‘Well, it’s nothing she doesn’t deserve. Don’t you feel angry? You should do.’
Mum put her head in her hands. ‘I’m not sure how I feel, Lauren. These last few weeks have been hell. Most of the time I feel numb. Every so often I get a flood of emotion and then I pack it away again. I have to, for Ella’s sake.’
I shared Mum’s surprise at the way Lauren had dealt with X. I hadn’t seen her get that angry for ages. Not since the wild period of her late teens and early twenties when, after years of being a model student, she went off the rails good and proper. I’d heard her rant and rave plenty back then. Usually at my parents; sometimes at me. She went off to uni to study modern languages but dropped out at the end of the first year after spending most of the time off her head on drugs and sleeping her way around the campus.
She moved back home for a hellish few months of rows, which didn’t exactly help me focus on my A levels. Then she fell in with a rough crowd. She moved in with one of them, a nasty piece of work called Ed, who introduced her to heroin. A nightmare catalogue of incidents followed, leading up to her stealing our late grandmother’s engagement ring from Mum’s jewellery box and selling it to fund her habit. That proved the final straw for my parents. I’d gone off to uni myself by then, determined to make the most of it and not to follow the same path my sister had. But I’d never forget the phone call I got from Dad, warning me not to let her in if she visited.
‘We’ve had to cut her off,’ he told me, his voice brimming with pain. ‘She’s out of control. We’ve told her she’s not welcome at the house any more. I’ve warned her not to contact us again unless she says goodbye to that bloody boyfriend and goes into rehab.’
My eighteen-year-old self was glad. Having had Lauren dominate family discussions and spark fight after fight for more than a year, I’d grown to resent her. She’d shattered the closeness we’d once had as siblings and I welcomed the hard line my parents were taking with her.
Now, as a parent myself, I wondered how Mum and Dad had had the strength of character to act like they did. It was the right thing to do; I’d never doubted that. But would I have been able to do the same with Ella in that situation? It must have been horrendous for them.
Luckily, Lauren never did come to visit me at uni. None of us heard from her or saw her again for nearly eighteen months. Mum and Dad put on a brave face, but I could see that it was killing them. We didn’t have a clue where she was, although we later found out that she’d spent most of that time up in Scotland. She and Ed had moved into a squat in his home city of Glasgow. Then one day, after Ed moved on from verbal abuse to physical abuse, she finally saw sense. She sought refuge in a women’s centre where a kind member of staff took her under her wing. She guided Lauren into rehab and, after that, back into the arms of her family, her health thankfully still intact.
There were a few hiccups along the way, but Lauren was determined to succeed, so she did. It took a long time before any of us trusted her again, but that too came eventually. Then she met Xander – a well-educated, eloquent Dutchman – while InterRailing around Europe. He was the antithesis of Ed; Mum and Dad were over the moon, even when she decided to move to the Netherlands to be with him. I liked him too, although I would have preferred it if he’d come to live here instead. I’d just got used to having my sister back, only for her to go away again.
I remembered wondering whether I ought to have chosen Lauren and Xander to be Ella’s guardians at the time when I wrote my will. They were much younger than Mum and Dad and likely to be around longer, but I’d been put off by the fact they lived abroad and didn’t see Ella that often. She didn’t know them nearly as well as her grandparents.
‘You’re not really going to refuse to see your father, are you?’ Mum asked. ‘He needs his family right now – all of us. As hard as it might be, we can’t desert him. None of us can. If you find it hard, imagine how tough it is for me. Families stick together at times of crisis, no matter what. And if anyone should be able to forgive him, you should. He forgave you enough. We all did.’
Lauren looked sheepishly across the room, tears in her eyes. ‘That was a low blow.’
‘It needed saying.’
‘Why are you, of all people, defending him?’
‘Someone has to – and he is still my husband. You’ll feel different when you’ve seen what a state he’s in.’
‘Look, maybe I was a bit harsh, but this has come as such a shock. I feel like Dad’s totally let me down.’
‘I understand that, believe me, but he’s been a very good father to you over the years. You can’t just write him off.’
Lauren paced up and down the room a few times before sitting next to Mum on the couch and giving her a hug. ‘Sorry. I’m not helping, am I?’
Mum shook her head.
‘What do you want me to do? How can I help?’
‘Ditch the anger for a start. I don’t need conflict. It’s been really hard doing everything alone. Now you’re here, what I need most is your support.’
‘Fine. You’ve got it. But how are you going to play things with Dad? He won’t always be asleep. Sooner or later you’ll have to talk to him. Are you going to tell him what you know?’
Mum sat back with a sigh. ‘I honestly have no idea. It’s like there are two voices in my head. One tells me that I’ve got to do it: that the last thing we need is more lies. But the other says I should wait until he’s better. Otherwise I might harm his recovery. Even if I do tell him, it’s not like he’ll be able to respond properly in his current state. I’ll have to sleep on it, I suppose; see how I feel in the morning.’
I stayed with them as they chatted some more and watched a little mindless TV. They were talking about going up to bed when we were all startled by a blood-curdling scream from upstairs.
‘Daddy!’ Ella’s voice cried in terror. ‘Get off my daddy!’
I tried to race upstairs but ran straight into the path of Mum and Lauren – also on their feet – who unknowingly repelled me. I found myself slammed into the nearest wall with even greater force than usual. It must have been because we were all moving so quickly. It left me stunned – but still conscious at least, unlike the earlier incident with the transit van. By the time I’d got back up and brushed myself off, I was a couple of minutes behind the other two.
Upstairs I found Mum sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning over Ella and stroking her hair, while Lauren knelt at her niece’s side, whispering soothing words into her ear. Ella was still whimpering. Her tired eyes gave a flicker of recognition when I entered, but she heeded the finger I held in front of my mouth and looked away.
‘There, there, little one,’ Lauren said. ‘Are you feeling a bit calmer now?’
Ella nodded against her pillow and slipped her thumb into her mouth.
‘It was just a bad dream,’ Mum said. ‘It’s only normal. It’s your mind’s way of dealing with things. You know none of it was real, don’t you?’
Ella nodded again. ‘Yes, I know,’ she said, slipping her thumb out of her mouth so Mum and Lauren could understand her. ‘I think I’m ready to go back to sleep again.’
Lauren planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘Would you like one of us to stay with you until you drop off?’
‘No. I’m okay.’
I took care to stand well aside as they left the room and then padded over to the bedside. ‘Hi, Ella.’
‘Why are you whispering, Daddy? No one ca
n hear you apart from me.’
‘I know. I just wanted to make sure that you kept it down too. They might still be listening.’
‘I will.’
‘You had a nightmare?’
‘Yes. About you.’
‘What happened?’
‘You were outside Nana and Grandad’s church.’
‘Where my funeral was held?’
‘Yes. Someone was trying to take you away from me.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t see. They were in a black car. They pulled you inside and drove away. I thought it was real.’
A sliver of fear sliced through me.
‘Well, don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t real. I’m here and no one’s taking me anywhere. It was just a bad dream. Are you feeling better?’
‘I think so,’ she said, stifling a yawn. ‘Will you stay with me?’
‘Of course. I’m tired anyway. I’m sure a good sleep will do us both the world of good.’
Ella pulled the quilt around her, tucking herself into a cosy foetal position from which she could gaze at me as she dropped off.
I smiled. ‘Goodnight, my love. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.’
‘I won’t.’
CHAPTER 16
TWENTY-SIX DAYS LEFT
Arthur was on my mind the next morning. It was very odd that I’d not been able to find him. Where could he have been? As far as I knew, he spent almost all of his time at the church and the school. Unless he didn’t want to be found. Perhaps it wasn’t safe for him to meet me at the moment or – perish the thought – that thing from the cricket pavilion had caught up with him. I prayed that wasn’t the case. Despite Arthur’s reassurances, the memory of being trapped alone there, so close to that terrifying presence, still spooked me.
I wanted to look for Arthur again today, but I was torn, as I knew I ought to check up on Dad at the hospital. In the end, it was Dad who won. He was family and, what’s more, Ella had specifically asked me to visit him while she was at school.
‘I don’t trust Nana to tell me the truth,’ she said precociously. ‘She thinks I can’t handle it, but I can. Really. You’ll tell me, won’t you?’
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