Tangled Lives

by Hilary Boyd

  ‘I know what you’re saying, but we can’t second-guess how he feels about it.’

  ‘I’d be angry, if it was me.’

  ‘Please … I think we’ve done the blame thing, darling.’

  ‘OK, OK, easy for you to say.’ She glanced across at her friend. ‘Well, next step, telling the others.’

  But oddly, now she’d met him, she knew this would be easier. She would be telling them about a living, breathing presence called Daniel Gray, not the shifting memory of a tiny baby.

  ‘Where have you been, Mum?’ Lucy jumped up as her mother came down the stairs to the kitchen. ‘It’s after nine. I called your mobile hours ago, and Dad’s. Neither of you were answering. I thought something had happened.’

  Annie gave her a brief hug before sitting down at the table. ‘Sorry, sweetheart, it must have been off. I was with Jamie, we went to visit Marjory Best and you know how it is when Marjory and I get together. I did tell you.’

  ‘Oh, yes. You did. I forgot. Did you have a good time?’

  She looked relieved, but Annie felt Daniel’s presence hovering between them. She hated lying to Lucy, and her guilt drove her to a sudden urge to reveal all then and there, not waiting for the others. But she held herself together and fought down the instinct.

  ‘Isn’t Dad home?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him all day. Are you OK, Mum? You look really pale.’

  ‘Do I? It’s a long old drive back from that bit of Kent.’ She paused. ‘I’ll give your dad a try.’ It was something to do. Her head was still bursting with Daniel; she could think of nothing else. She dug her mobile out of her bag and a piece of paper fell to the tiled floor. It was Daniel’s contact details, scribbled on the torn-off corner of an old envelope – one of many such pieces of scrap paper lying about Marjory’s chaotic kitchen. She grabbed it quickly and stuffed it back in her bag, but Lucy was putting the kettle on and didn’t notice.

  ‘It’s me,’ she said, unnecessarily, in response to Richard’s greeting. ‘Where are you? … oh, of course … no … yes, it was good … no … alright. See you later.’

  Lucy looked questioningly at her as she ended the call.

  ‘I’d forgotten he had to speak at this conference thing. He says it went well but he’ll be late. Why don’t I do us an omelette? Or some scrambled eggs?’

  ‘It’s OK, Mum, I’ve eaten,’ Lucy answered. She gathered her stuff from the table. ‘I think I’ll go up now. Do some emails.’ She gave her mother a quick kiss. ‘’Night.’

  ‘Good night, darling. Sleep well.’

  Annie was relieved to be alone and have a chance to run over the day’s events in peace. She replayed everything Daniel had said, wondering most about his adoptive mother. She couldn’t help feeling a twinge of envy for this unknown woman who had chosen to nurture her son. She had loved him. Nothing else matters, she told herself, ashamed of her envious thoughts.

  There was some white wine in the fridge from the previous night. She poured herself a glass, reached for her phone and scrolled through to Daniel’s number.

  Loved meeting you. Hope we can again

  soon. Regards, Annie. X

  She read it over and deleted the kiss. Then, for the next hour, she checked every few minutes to see if he had responded. But there was nothing. It reminded her yet again of being young and waiting for a boyfriend to call. She went to bed but couldn’t sleep, gradually convincing herself that she had not measured up to Daniel’s high standards of what a mother should be. She was relieved to hear her husband making his way upstairs.

  ‘How can we get them all together without telling them why?’

  Richard, still half dressed in his shirt and boxers, frowned at her. ‘Ed can never do Saturdays, and you know what it’s like getting him to change those nightmare shifts. We’ll have to make it Sunday.’

  ‘Can’t we just say we want a family get-together?

  That we haven’t had one for a long time. Something like that?’

  ‘But we have. We had one only a couple of weeks ago. To be honest I think Lucy’ll be relieved to know what the atmosphere’s been about.’

  ‘Maybe. She keeps giving me those intense looks of hers. You know the ones.’

  Richard nodded and smiled as he put on his blue cotton pyjamas and climbed into bed. They lay side by side in the wide bed, not moving, saying nothing, like two stone effigies.

  ‘I’ll be glad to get it over with,’ Richard muttered.

  ‘Me too.’ She glanced at her husband. ‘Will they mind?’ Her stomach fluttered when she envisioned the three faces staring at her as she exposed her past.

  ‘Mind? I doubt it. It was before they were born. They’ll be surprised, but once they’ve got over the shock …’

  Annie heard Richard’s reassuring words, but the young girl who had been berated by her mother for being a ‘slut’, for bringing shame on the family honour, for betraying her beloved father’s memory, came back to haunt her. It was the girl she was then, the girl who had given her baby away, not the mother they were so familiar with, who she’d be presenting to her children for the very first time. She hoped they’d understand.

  What will it feel like, letting the secret go? she wondered. She had learnt repression at her mother’s knee. So well, that by the time she was grown up she was perfectly trained to withstand her own emotions. Not speaking about Tom to the children had been second nature to her: a closed compartment in her mind. It was hard to imagine that compartment would soon no longer exist.

  6

  Ed watched as Marsha vigorously beat butter into the potatoes with a wooden spoon. He had a handful of knives and forks in one hand, but he made no move to put them on the table. Marsha glanced up at him.

  ‘What? You look miles away.’

  Ed shook himself. ‘Oh, nothing. Just thinking.’

  ‘Always a mistake.’

  Emma appeared in the doorway. ‘What is?’

  ‘Thinking,’ Marsha replied, indicating her brother with a nod of her head.

  Emma went over to him and laid her cheek against his for a moment. ‘Love you,’ she muttered in his ear. Which was what he’d been thinking about: love. He would like to talk to Marsha about this love thing when they got the chance. It confused him and made him feel uneasy, in some ways dishonest. Because it felt too easy, Emma loving him like this. Suddenly. Not that it wasn’t what he wanted. And the sex was mind-blowing – he couldn’t get enough of her.

  But he just wasn’t sure if she really meant it, or whether it was just something she said sort of automatically when she was in a relationship.

  The flat doorbell rang. ‘That’ll be Lucy. Get it, will you?’ Marsha said.

  ‘So, Sunday it is.’ Lucy helped herself to a couple of sausages. ‘The mystery will finally be revealed!’

  They all looked at her.

  ‘Mystery?’ Marsha asked.

  ‘Yeah, about Mum. I told you the other day. I knew you weren’t listening.’

  Marsha laughed. ‘OK, so tell us again.’

  Lucy sighed. ‘She’s been weird for two weeks now. Sort of preoccupied, but then really generous, and cooking all these huge meals. Can’t explain really … it’s as if she’s hiding something.’

  ‘And you think she’s going to tell all on Sunday?’ Ed asked.

  ‘Well, don’t you think it’s odd she is so insistent that we’re all there?’

  Ed shrugged. ‘Mum’s always insistent we’re there. It’s her thing, all that nurturing stuff.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me about Sunday, babe,’ Emma chimed in.

  ‘No, well, she said just us three …’ He saw Emma’s eyes flash and knew he was in trouble.

  ‘Did you ask if I could come?’

  Ed nodded. ‘Of course I did, but she said just family.’

  ‘And I’m not family?’

  ‘Emms, this isn’t about you, OK?’ Marsha spoke sharply. ‘Go on, Luce. You really think there’s something up?’

  Ed could hear the
worry in her voice.

  Lucy nodded. ‘Yeah. I can’t think what, but something. I don’t think I’m imagining it.’

  Emma got up and stamped off to the bathroom. Marsha rolled her eyes at her brother.

  ‘And did you ask her why she was being weird?’ Ed asked Lucy.

  ‘I did, but she and Dad fobbed me off. Sort of pretended I was deluded. But I saw the look between them.’

  ‘So Dad’s in on it too?’

  For a moment there was silence. Emma came back to the table and plonked herself down, her face set in a sulky pout.

  ‘What are the options?’ Ed asked them, pouring out more wine.

  ‘Maybe they’re splitting up,’ Emma volunteered, her interest sparked.

  ‘Very helpful, Emms.’

  ‘Just saying …’

  ‘I don’t think it’s anything bad. She seems distracted rather than miserable,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Maybe Mum’s just about to sell her cake business for millions, and they’re going to up sticks and move to the south of France.’

  ‘Not!’ Ed laughed at Marsha’s suggestions. He envied his parents’ focused lives. They seemed always to have known the direction they wanted to take, then taken it.

  ‘Can we change the subject, please, guys? They’d have told you if it was anything serious.’ Emma sounded bored, but Ed knew she was just pissed off. She wouldn’t let it drop that she hadn’t been included in the brunch.

  ‘Well, come Sunday, we’ll know.’

  Annie took the blueberry muffins out of the oven and laid the baking sheet carefully on the top of the stove. The muffins sat plump and golden in their waxed cases, the tops dotted with crystals of coarse baking sugar.

  ‘Smells good.’ Richard cast an amused glance at the table, laden with fresh croissants, pains au chocolat, dishes of apricot and blackcurrant jam, hard-boiled eggs in their shells, fresh orange juice in a glass jug, thick slices of ham beside a wedge of Manchego cheese on a white china platter. ‘Are we feeding five or five hundred?’ he teased, but Annie was used to it. After all, she had first met him in the tiny galley kitchen his company used for hospitality, and even on first acquaintance he had been in awe of her culinary zeal.

  ‘Normally we just get cold ham and salad,’ he’d told her back then, looking longingly at the crusty chicken pie just out of the oven and the buttery new potatoes. ‘You don’t have to go to so much trouble, you know.’ Annie had sent him a scathing look and said, ‘But I like cooking. Where’s the fun in ham and salad?’

  Now she said, ‘You know it calms me down.’ She spoke lightly, as she lifted the warm muffins into a basket. ‘Will you do the coffee, please?’

  ‘Sure.’ But before he did so, he came up and put his arms around her. ‘I know you’re nervous, but there’s no need to be. They love you.’

  Annie sank back against his chest for a moment. She was hot from the cooking, but she felt a sudden shiver, as if her nerves were short-circuiting.

  ‘I hope you’re right, but thank you … thanks for the support.’ She took a deep breath and returned to the soothing task of arranging the muffins in a loose pyramid.

  ‘Morning.’ Lucy came into the kitchen.

  ‘Hi, sweetheart,’ Richard responded.

  ‘The others not here yet?’

  Annie glanced at the clock. It read just before eleven. ‘I’m sure they’re on their way,’ she said.

  Lucy helped herself to a sliver of ham and for a moment there was silence in the kitchen.

  Ed and Marsha arrived together. Annie thought they seemed a little subdued. She wondered what Lucy had said to them.

  ‘Coffee?’ Richard was bright and businesslike as he handed out cups of coffee. ‘Sit … sit,’ he encouraged.

  Annie felt her stomach churn. She glanced over at her husband, his eyebrows raised as he urged her on.

  ‘Muffin? They’re blueberry.’ She indicated the basket.

  ‘Mum!’ Lucy’s voice sounded like a pistol shot. She didn’t need to say more. Annie took a deep breath and stood up. It felt better to be free of the table. She leant her back against the cold porcelain of the butler’s sink. The expectation in the room was suddenly palpable, everyone avoiding everyone else’s eye.

  ‘I have something to tell you,’ she began. ‘Something that I should have told you years ago, but I didn’t know how. It never seemed the right time.’

  She paused, mesmerised by her children’s expectant faces, frozen in the moment. Richard pointedly cleared his throat.

  ‘I have a son.’ She forced the words out. She’d rehearsed all sorts of versions, but in the end she forgot everything and just told the bald truth. But hearing what she’d just said, she quickly corrected herself. ‘Another son. I gave him away for adoption when I was nineteen.’

  She waited. Ed and the girls were just staring at her in stunned silence, their faces no longer expectant but bewildered.

  ‘I told your father when we first met … at least, when I knew we were serious about each other. But at the time I thought I would never see Tom – I called him Tom but he’s called Daniel Gray now – I never expected to see him again. I looked after him in the hospital until he was adopted … in Kent.’ The hot flow, once started, of hitherto secret history felt like a sort of balm. She wanted to go on talking about him forever now. Her children, however, were still gaping in astonishment, as if they didn’t understand a word she was saying.

  ‘Adopted children didn’t have the right to find their birth parents in 1967, nor the other way round. Then the law changed.’

  ‘And he’s found you?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Yes. That’s where I was the other night. I met him at Marjory’s last Saturday.’

  Ed was silent, his head dropped.

  ‘Why did you give him away?’ Marsha’s expression seemed puzzled rather than disapproving.

  Annie was aware of a strange lightness in her body, as if the secret, now expelled, had had a material weight. It made her feel almost dizzy. Here was the question at last.

  ‘I … well, I … it was too late to have an abortion. I didn’t realise I was pregnant till I was four months gone.’ Lucy looked surprised, Ed still said nothing. ‘And anyway, it wasn’t so easy to get an abortion in those days.’

  ‘Who was the father?’ Marsha asked.

  ‘Just a boy I met. He … wasn’t important. A mistake really.’

  ‘And he didn’t want anything to do with the baby?’ Lucy queried.

  ‘I didn’t tell him.’ Annie heard the questions as if they were familiar stations on an Underground map. She had repeated them to herself so often, over so many years, and they were all interconnected, all leading one to another to another, but she had never arrived at a final destination, a reply that would end all questions.

  ‘It was such a different time,’ Richard said. ‘Your mother had no economic independence. She felt she didn’t have a choice.’

  She knew she should have been grateful to her husband for his support. But in fact she felt a surge of annoyance.

  ‘Don’t, Richard … please. I did have a choice. I knew of other girls who kept their children. But my mother was so horrified at how it would look to the parents if I was suddenly toting an illegitimate baby around her precious academy that I gave in. I was weak. And I’d led such a sheltered life.’ She paused again. ‘Mother sent me off to Marjory Best. That was how I met her and became friends. She took in pregnant girls like me, who had nowhere to go.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ Ed finally spoke. The face she knew so well was suddenly inscrutable.

  She took a long breath. ‘Well, he’s … he’s great. He’s thirty-five, he used to be in advertising, but now he writes plays, he read English at Cambridge. He’s really beautiful, he looks incredibly like Great-Uncle Terence. I thought he was charming, easy to talk to. I really liked him.’

  ‘So this is why you’ve been so weird!’ Lucy said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Marsha added. ‘We’ve been trying to work out why for d
ays. You’d have laughed at some of our suggestions.’

  ‘You worried us,’ Ed stated, his tone faintly hostile.

  ‘So,’ she said, unsure what to say next. ‘You’re not shocked and horrified?’

  There was a small silence, then Marsha said, ‘Well, Mum, I’m surprised, sure. Shocked even, I suppose. But why would we be horrified?’

  ‘I think it’s exciting, having a new relly,’ Lucy declared.

  Annie turned to her son.

  ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t tell us before.’ He wouldn’t look her in the eye.

  ‘I’ve always felt so ashamed of what I did. I thought you’d think I was a terrible person for giving my baby away.’

  There was another short silence.

  ‘And it was hard, when you were children, to find the right moment,’ Richard added.

  ‘I can’t imagine having my baby adopted.’ Lucy said quietly. She reached across the table and took her mother’s hand in hers. Annie held it tight.

  ‘But why couldn’t you keep him?’ Marsha persisted, ever the truth-seeker. ‘Grandma had enough money. She could have paid for you to get a flat on the other side of London so those stupid parents wouldn’t be offended.’

  Annie felt a pricking in the back of her throat and swallowed hard.

  ‘You’re right, of course. But at the time …’

  ‘I’m sure you’d have kept him if you could’ve, wouldn’t you?’ Lucy said.

  Would I? She thought. Would I have kept him if my mother had supported me? I suppose so, but not happily. The truth is, I was young and thoughtless, I wanted my freedom.

  ‘Mum … he really is your son, is he? I mean, how do you know?’ Ed’s voice was full of suspicion.

  Annie was surprised.

  ‘Well, of course … I suppose I don’t know for certain, but he got in touch through Social Services. And, like I said, there’s a strong family resemblance.’ Not for a moment had she thought that Daniel was not who he said he was.

  ‘It’s just you hear of people conning families by pretending to be a long-lost heir and copping all their money.’