Tangled Lives

by Hilary Boyd

  Annie could picture the two old ladies in the V&A cafeteria, politely sniping at each other but enjoying every minute. The smile she couldn’t control received a reproving look from her mother.

  ‘Moaning is unattractive and, what’s more, it’s very bad manners. Always think of others before oneself. That was my mother’s motto and it’s been mine. Follow that rule and one can’t go wrong in life.’

  True in essence, Annie thought, but perhaps her mother wasn’t the best advertisement for this oft-repeated mantra, since she seemed to have gone through life never considering anybody but herself, except in her strict adherence to the finer points of etiquette.

  For a while they chatted about the usual inconsequential things that Eleanor always saved for her. It mostly involved society tittle-tattle about people mercifully far removed from Annie’s life now. Get on with it, Annie admonished herself, and took a deep breath.

  ‘Mother … I’ve got something I want to tell you.’ She heard her own voice sounding alarmingly portentous.

  Eleanor, stopped in her tracks, raised her eyebrows and waited, fingering the string of pearls around her neck.

  ‘Sounds ominous,’ she said.

  ‘It is. Well, “ominous” isn’t the right word. It’s more … well … I wasn’t going to tell you, but …’

  ‘Stop mumbling, darling. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’

  Annie drew herself up, leaning forward on the sofa, steeling herself for her mother’s reaction. Does it really matter what she thinks, she asked herself.

  ‘I’ve heard from Kent Social Services. My son wants to meet me.’

  ‘Your son?’ Eleanor looked as puzzled as Richard had, then horrified. ‘You mean the adopted one?’

  ‘Well, I’m not talking about Ed, Mother.’

  ‘That’s outrageous! What does he want? It must be money. He’s heard you’re successful with those cakes of yours and he wants a handout.’

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘Well, darling, really. Think about it. He must be what, thirty-something by now? Why has he suddenly come out of the woodwork? I hope you’re not going to indulge him.’

  ‘What sort of a woman wouldn’t want to meet the baby they gave away?’

  ‘A very sensible one, in my opinion. You’re soft, Annie, you always have been, just like your father. That’s how you got yourself into this mess in the first place. Take it from me, no man of that age needs a mother. He’ll just use you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She got up; she’d had enough. ‘Anyway, I thought I should let you know.’

  Eleanor tutted. ‘No need to take umbrage, darling. I’m just warning you. I’m sure dear Richard has said the same thing.’

  Here we go, she thought crossly, the Dear Richard moment. He didn’t remotely fit the bill for Eleanor’s Ideal Husband. He wasn’t aristocratic, didn’t have inherited wealth, land or a title, hadn’t gone to Eton or Oxford, didn’t buy his clothes in Jermyn Street or have his hair cut at Trumpers. Yet to Eleanor he could do no wrong. Richard played up to her mother, tongue in cheek, but in fact the two got on surprisingly well.

  ‘He hasn’t, actually.’ Annie reached down to give her a chilly peck on the cheek.

  ‘Well, he should have. This chap … you know nothing about him. Just because he’s your son, you think he’s bona fide, but he could, for instance, be violent. You have no idea who adopted him. They weren’t necessarily nice people you know, darling. Not like us. They could have been drinkers, or criminals. Feckless, at any rate. One can’t rely on his having our values.’

  Our values! she spluttered silently. Our values? Would they be the ones that ran her daughter out of town, a teenager and pregnant? He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t have our values, she thought.

  ‘We don’t even know the exact provenance of his genes,’ Eleanor added, her look sly.

  ‘I’d better get back to work,’ Annie said, ignoring the pointed remark.

  ‘Be angry with me if you like. But promise me, if you do see the boy, make sure Richard is there too. Please, darling. I’m serious.’ The old lady looked anxiously at her.

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ she replied, her heart softening at her mother’s obvious, though surely misplaced, concern.

  Even the raw wind was a relief to Annie as she made her way across Sloane Square to the Tube. It was Richard who had insisted she tell her mother before she told the children – Daniel was, after all, her grandson. She was glad it was over; the conversation with her mother reminded Annie of so much she’d tried hard to forget.

  Lucy was sitting at the kitchen table cradling a mug of tea when Annie got home.

  ‘Not at work?’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘I took the morning off. It’s the interview on Friday and I need to practise.’

  ‘Interview?’ Annie frowned.

  ‘You know, the volunteer NGO job? I told you.’ Lucy looked a bit put out that her mother hadn’t remembered. ‘Which is great, but I’m hopeless at interviews. I get so nervous my voice shakes. Will you go through the sort of things they might ask? You know, coach me?’

  Annie’s heart sank. She knew her youngest was hell bent on saving every child in Africa. It had started in her teens when she watched a documentary about AIDS orphans. She and Richard had been sure it was just a phase, but Lucy had gone on to choose a degree in Social Anthropology at SOAS, and was now utterly committed to working in an African orphanage.

  ‘Of course.’ She paused. ‘But you don’t think Dad would be better qualified to help? I’ve never been for a proper interview in my life. Mother secured all my jobs.’

  ‘I suppose that was one of the advantages of your posh upbringing.’

  ‘Hmmm. Well, without sounding like a brat, it certainly didn’t seem like an advantage at the time because it was always the job that Mother thought would be suitable. I didn’t have any say.’

  ‘Couldn’t you tell her you didn’t want to do it?’

  ‘I suppose the problem was that at that stage I didn’t know what I wanted to do. If I had, I’m sure I’d have stood up to her.’ She didn’t add that, at the time, she had lost all confidence in herself, that she hadn’t cared much what she did, as long as it was something that stopped her having too much time to think about the baby.

  Lucy was silent for a minute, then said, ‘You know I really appreciate you and Dad not trying to stop me going to Africa, Mum?’

  Annie smiled. ‘You shouldn’t thank us. We would if we could.’ In fact Richard had broken out in a sweat when he thought of his precious daughter in such a potentially dangerous environment. ‘She’ll be all on her own. She’s sure to be kidnapped, or killed … I can’t bear to think what else.’ But Annie, no more sanguine than her husband about the danger, but considerably more realistic when it came to Lucy’s determination, convinced him there was nothing either of them could do to stop her.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Lucy said. ‘And that’s why I love it that you’re supporting me.’ She paused. ‘God, I can’t imagine you telling me what work I should do.’

  ‘No, well, different times.’

  ‘So will you help me? You’ve interviewed loads of people for the bakery – you must know what makes you take one person over another. And Dad’ll just get hysterical and say dumb things about how there are lots of children in this country who need saving.’

  ‘He’s probably right.’

  ‘Don’t start!’ Lucy began gathering up the stack of papers on the table. ‘I’d better get going, I’m going to be late. Can we do it tonight? Just grill me a bit so I get my courage up?’

  Annie nodded.

  ‘This is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do, Mum. It might be hard, but I have to go. It means everything to me.’

  Her earnest face, with the brown eyes full of compassion and missionary zeal, tore at her mother’s heart.

  ‘No, I know, darling. But we’re your parents. We worry.’

  Lucy shook her head in amused despair, and waved goodbye to her mother.
>
  4

  Dear Tom,

  I know you are called Daniel now, and I shall call you that from now on, but Tom was the name I gave you when you were born. I am writing to say that I would be very happy to meet you. If you are still keen, I suggest we do so at the house of Marjory Best, the lady who took me in when I was pregnant with you and who’s happy to host our meeting. She lives in Kent, about eight miles from Canterbury, and her nearest station is Faversham. I don’t know where you live, but I hope this isn’t too inconvenient for you. I thought it would be better to meet there than in a noisy public place.

  I have suggested two o’clock on Saturday April 27th to Marjory. I hope these arrangements suit you, Daniel, but if not, please don’t hesitate to suggest an alternative.

  With best wishes,

  Annie Delancey

  She had written and re-written the letter until her head spun, then left it burning a hole on her laptop, unable to do any more about it.

  ‘Should I be more loving?’ Annie asked Richard now, reading the letter out to him one final time before sending it off. ‘It sounds so formal.’ She clutched the print out in her hand, hovering over her husband as he sat on the sofa in the sitting room, trying to read the paper before supper.

  ‘At this stage, “loving” would be a little weird,’ he muttered, not taking his eyes from the page.

  ‘Well, do you think it’s too personal then? The bit about naming him Tom? Perhaps I should leave that out?’

  Richard lowered the paper, smiling up at his wife. ‘No, I like that. It’s good to have something about your connection with each other in there.’

  ‘So is it bossy to be the one to suggest the time and place? Maybe he should be the one to take the lead on this. I mean, he’s a thirty-five-year-old man. He can presumably make his own decisions.’

  ‘Up to you, Annie. But I don’t see there’s anything wrong with making your own suggestion. If he has another idea, I’m sure he’ll say so.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t want to put him off before he’s even seen me.’

  ‘Annie! You’ve written a brilliant letter. Just send it, for God’s sake.’

  But she wasn’t to be mollified. This was too important.

  ‘He’s probably got a car. I think I’ll leave out the bit about the train. He can Google it anyway, if he needs to get one. I don’t want him to think I’m being patronising.’

  Richard just shook his head, picking up his paper again.

  ‘OK, OK,’ she walked over to her desk in the corner. After adding Marjory’s address and a covering letter to Kent Social Services, she pressed ‘print’, collected the letters from the tray, signed them, read them through just one more time, and folded them into an envelope before she had time to change her mind.

  Annie arrived at the bakery with some relief. She had spent the last two days, since sending the letter off, obsessively thinking about Daniel, imagining what they would talk about, how he would look: Will he resemble me? My side of the family? Or will the Carnegie clan be dominant? She tried to recall exactly what Charles looked like, but the image had become blurred by time. He was handsome – she remembered that much – tall and blond, his hair wavy and a little long – it was the sixties – and cringed as she remembered her eighteen-year-old self thinking him almost godlike. Perhaps his eyes were blue? She couldn’t be sure. And the set of his features wouldn’t materialise at all. She hoped Daniel didn’t favour his father too much; it would be hard to take.

  She hurried down the steps of her floury, sweet-smelling kingdom. Here she was in control and knew exactly what she was doing. She loved it. And the beautiful thing about a cake was its mechanical simplicity. People panicked about cakes but the truth was that, if you followed certain steps, you got certain results. Nothing in her life had ever been as uncomplicated as her cakes.

  The room was large and light. Although it was a semibasement beneath a two-storey sixties block of offices behind Gospel Oak station, the high windows, which faced onto a small car park at the rear of the building, ran the length of the bakery and took up almost a third of the back wall. So although the strip-lights were on except when there was very bright sunlight, the room never suffered from the claustrophobia of a basement.

  Four long, laminated work surfaces stretched across the space, a bank of ovens sat against the north wall, an industrial-sized fridge on the opposite side. Metal shelving ran above the work surfaces and against the walls, stacked high with baking tins, cake-stands, boards, cutters, tins of icing, flour, sugar-craft, ribbon, dowels to hold the tiers in place – everything needed to make a celebration cake.

  Each of her four employees momentarily stopped work to greet Annie. Jodie, her manager, a tough, lively woman in her thirties, was in the corner office responding to orders on the computer.

  ‘Morning, Annie.’ She rolled her shoulders and pushed the desk chair away from the computer. ‘Masses of orders, all weddings so far today – and mostly for September.’ She smiled at her boss as she reached back to re-knot her dark ponytail.

  ‘Great. The autumn surge never lets us down.’ Annie sat down at her own desk, which was pushed tight against her manager’s in the small space.

  Jodie nodded agreement. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Good, yes.’ The fact that her long-lost son was trying to contact her seemed somehow unreal in this mundane work environment. She’d hidden it away in a secret compartment of her brain.

  ‘Coffee?’

  Annie nodded enthusiastically. ‘Please, that would be wonderful.’

  She looked through the glass of the office wall, and saw the other three employees hard at work. Carol, a plump, middle-aged baking genius, was levelling cake mixture in four deep tins. Kadir, a young Turkish boy who spoke little English, was painting edible silver colouring onto icing scrolls on the top layer of a wedding cake. Annie hadn’t known how he would fit in when she had taken him on a year ago, but she soon found he had artistic flair and one of the steadiest hands in the business for decorating the cakes. Lisa, the last of the crew, was the general factotum. In her twenties and from the estate opposite, she cheerfully cleaned, cleared, mixed ingredients, listed supplies, set ovens. Without her, Annie knew, the more delicate egos of Carol and Kadir wouldn’t be able to function.

  Jodie placed a mug of coffee on the desk beside her.

  ‘Kadir’s come up with some ideas for the Chandos wedding.’ Jodie pushed across a sheaf of sketches. ‘I think the first one’s great.’

  Annie looked at the drawings, happy that Kadir was beginning to take over some of her design work. She pointed. ‘This one?’

  Jodie checked and nodded.

  Annie considered it for a moment. ‘Yes, very good. Complicated and time-consuming, but he and Carol are more than capable.’ The sketch in front of her was for a lavish concoction consisting of flowers in pink and white – roses, apple blossom, honeysuckle, lilies, dog roses – spilling elegantly from a wooden gardening trug, the handle tied with a huge bow. ‘That should satisfy Madam.’

  Stick-thin Serena Chandos, who looked as if she would faint with fear at even the smell of cake, had nonetheless insisted on coming to the bakery, though she was hardly able to negotiate the steep concrete steps in her designer stiletto boots. She wafted a sharp perfume, at odds with the sugary ambience of the room, and produced from her Burberry bag a raft of hideous designs that no self-respecting cake would be seen dead in. She had wanted something that reflected her husband-to-be’s market-gardening business, which he ran from his vast Yorkshire estate. Annie had needed to be very diplomatic.

  Jodie laughed. ‘It’ll cost her, but she went on and on about how money’s no object. She seemed to think it impressed us.’

  ‘You mean she thought we loved her because she was rich, whereas in fact it’s only the money we love!’

  ‘Yeah, ’fraid so. Although I reckon women like that don’t actually give a toss about what people like us think.’

  Carol, her round face framed by
a white-cotton peaked cap encompassing her greying hair, stuck her head round the door.

  ‘Sorry, ladies, but I need some input.’ Annie beckoned her inside. ‘You know the Carnegie cake … the chocolate one with a yacht on top?’ Both women nodded. It was for a diamond wedding. The couple lived on Hayling Island and had been obsessive sailors. ‘Just checking. The spec. says ‘alcohol’? Not sure what that means.’ She waved the plastic pocket with the specifications at Annie.

  Annie took it absentmindedly. The name: Carnegie. She had heard it last week, and months ago when the order was made. It wasn’t the first cake they’d made for the family, but although the name always resonated uncomfortably with her and prompted mild conjecture, it hadn’t held the significance it did today.

  ‘Annie?’ Carol said, when she didn’t reply.

  ‘I’ll look,’ Jodie volunteered, giving Annie a puzzled glance while she brought the order up on the screen. ‘Carnegie … yeah, I remember. He drinks, she doesn’t. The daughter says she thinks it would be OK to put booze in if it’s not too strong. She was leaving it to us.’

  ‘It tastes nicer with a wee tot,’ Carol suggested.

  Annie handed the spec. back to Carol, but couldn’t focus, her gaze still far away. Could this be Charles’s family? His parents, maybe, or an uncle and aunt? Would Charles himself be at the anniversary party?

  ‘Use your judgment,’ Jodie was saying. ‘If it were me, I’d put some in. Once it’s baked it doesn’t taste of alcohol anyway, it just tastes better.’

  ‘As long as she’s not allergic or anything.’

  Jodie shook her head. ‘The daughter would’ve said, surely. Anyway, they’ve been married sixty years. If she croaks after a bite of anniversary cake, at least they’ll have had a good run for their marital money.’

  Carol chuckled. ‘Mightn’t be too hot for business if the clients start keeling over.’

  ‘True, but he must be almost dead himself if he’s been married that long.’

  ‘Mind boggles. I’ve done twenty-eight and that’s nearly killed me!’