by Hilary Boyd
‘He’s charming and clever. Grandma likes clever.’ Lucy smiled at her.
Annie waited for Ed or Marsha to volunteer something.
‘Mum …’ Marsha began. ‘What happens now? With Daniel?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, he’s coming to stay till he goes to Edinburgh, but will he come back afterwards? I mean permanently?’
‘Of course not,’ Richard snapped.
Annie frowned at her husband. ‘No, he won’t be coming back, Mash.’
‘He might if he hasn’t got anywhere else to live, mightn’t he?’ Lucy asked.
She saw Richard’s what-did-I-tell-you look and wanted to smack him.
‘He’s just staying for a few weeks. He has no intention of living with us. Why would he want to?’ Annie tried to control her irritation.
More silence greeted her question.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind one way or another,’ said Marsha lightly. ‘I was just asking.’
Asking on her brother’s behalf, Annie thought.
‘He counts as family now, I suppose,’ said Lucy.
Ed finally spoke, his tone suddenly vehement. ‘He’s not family. Not in the way we all are.’ I mean, was that the last time we’ll have a Daniel-free family get-together, Mum? Is he always going to be around from now on?’
Annie didn’t reply for a second. Don’t antagonise him.
‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, Ed, if you want the truth. I’ve never been in this situation before, obviously. I’m just feeling my way … like the rest of you.’
She turned again and saw the concerned faces looking back at her. It reminded her of when they were young, lined up on the back seat on the way to school, to and fro to parties, swimming, the supermarket, on holiday in Scotland or Normandy.
‘Can we just let things take their course? I’m not going to foist someone on the family that nobody wants around.’
‘You’re not upset, are you, Mum?’ Lucy asked after a moment.
Annie said no, but she had to turn away, not wanting her children to see her incipient tears. They were tears as much of frustration as anything else.
‘I really don’t want this thing with Daniel to come between us,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘I couldn’t bear that.’
‘Nor me.’ Lucy’s tone was stalwart. ‘Can I come to yours for a bit?’ Annie heard her ask her sister in a low voice.
‘So what was going on at lunch?’ Richard asked, as soon as they’d dropped the others off.
‘Charles Carnegie called. We’re meeting on Tuesday.’
‘That explains it. You looked positively ill.’
‘I didn’t want to mention his name in front of Mother.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll be glad to tell him though … get it over with finally.’
‘Where are you meeting?’
‘Where?’ She was puzzled by the question. ‘He suggested I come to his flat.’
Richard’s head shot round. ‘His flat? Why can’t you meet in a pub or a bar?’
‘What does it matter where we meet?’
He didn’t reply.
‘Richard?’ She could hardly bear another round of bickering.
‘Just seems a trifle odd, meeting in his flat when he hardly knows you.’
‘I don’t see what’s odd about it.’ She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice as she added, ‘Anyway, we’ve made the plan now.’
‘Should be very cosy,’ Richard muttered.
She didn’t bother to answer.
The two sisters sat at the kitchen table in Marsha and Emma’s flat in Canonbury – a third-floor corner flat with two bedrooms and a view across to the overground station. Both cradled a mug of tea.
‘Are you as sick of all this as I am?’ Marsha asked her sister.
Lucy nodded. ‘Sure am. Being with the Delanceys these days is like hanging out with the Addams Family – no one’s entirely normal.’ She paused. ‘It’s the tension that drives me nuts.’
‘Will things get better, I wonder … when the unwitting cause of it takes up residence? Or will that make it worse?’
‘I don’t know … better, I think. It’s not as if Daniel’s a pain. Won’t Dad see that and relax?’
‘And Eddie?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘It goes deeper with him.’
‘Yeah … typical that Mum’s long-lost son pitches up with the face of an angel and a sodding Cambridge degree.’
‘I’m worried about Ed and Mum, Mash. He’s being such a dick at the moment, and Mum doesn’t help by being so focused on Daniel all the time. I mean, I totally understand why she is, but still …’
‘It’s a mess.’ Marsha gave her sister a rueful smile. ‘But it seems like we’re stuck with it.’
They sat for a while, sipping their tea, neither speaking.
‘When you met him – Daniel – at that party, I know you said he wasn’t your type, but …’
Marsha didn’t answer immediately. ‘Can’t go there, Luce.’
Her sister’s eyes widened.
‘No, I don’t mean that. We talked. I promise you, we only talked.’
She brushed off Lucy’s question, but she was still in shock and angry with her mother. Maybe the connection she’d felt for Daniel the night they’d met had been just a strange blood-tie thing, which she’d confused with sexual attraction on her part. But seeing him again, this time as her brother, had totally freaked her out. It wasn’t Daniel’s fault, obviously, but she was with Eddie on this one. She wished he would just go away.
10
‘I’m not sure why you need to make such an effort.’ Richard was standing in the hall, eyeing her from top to toe as she walked down the stairs. His tone was deceptively light.
‘I haven’t made “such an effort”,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve had a shower and washed my hair, which I always do before I go anywhere.’ But, in fact, she had been in a state about how she would seem to Carnegie, ever since his phone call. I shouldn’t give a toss, she told herself, because he probably hardly remembers our evening together. But a girl has her pride.
Richard was staring at her unhappily. ‘Is there any reason why I can’t come with you to meet Chelsea boy?’
Annie went up to him, touching her hands to his shoulders and looking him straight in the eye.
‘None at all. I told you, you can come if you want to. I just think this is something I’d rather do on my own. It’ll be awkward for both of us. I think he’d find it worse with an audience.’
‘I hate the thought of you seeing him at all … prick.’
‘You hate it!’ She smiled brightly and gave him a tender kiss on the cheek. ‘I’m doing this for Daniel,’ she said with deliberate resolution, as much to give herself courage as to remind her husband that she would never willingly have put herself in the same room as Charles Carnegie again. At least by the time Daniel moved in she would have some idea about whether his real father would play ball or not.
It was at moments like this, when her normally grounded, dependable husband seemed about to pick yet another fight about Daniel, that she lost heart. She and Richard had always been on the same page, united in their endeavours. It hadn’t necessarily been easy. When she’d been starting up her cake business, working all hours, Richard expanding his accountancy firm, and the children still small, there had been real tensions. But they’d both had a common purpose: the family.
Finding Daniel was of no obvious benefit to any of them, she realised sadly, as she gathered her jacket from the peg. And Richard hasn’t a clue how much I’ve wanted to see him again, because of my own daft notions of secrecy. Serves me right, I suppose, if he doesn’t understand what’s happening to me. Before he’d had calm, organised Annie and now he’s got obsessive, emotional Annie. Who wouldn’t be put out?
‘I won’t be late.’
He nodded resignedly. ‘Good luck then.’
*
The red-carpeted stairs up to Charles’s pied-à-terre seem
ed endless. The house was an end of terrace, with a grand white-pillared porch supporting a wrought iron balcony on the first floor, overlooking the communal gardens. As she climbed, the ceilings got lower, the staircases shorter, the carpet more worn, until she arrived on the top landing: the one-time servants’ quarters.
Charles opened the door of his flat before she had time to catch her breath.
‘Well, hello there.’ He grinned and gestured her inside. She had to squeeze past him as he stood on yet another narrow flight of stairs, which led up to the landing of his apartment. He smelled very clean, fragrant with ginger and citrus.
She remembered him at once. He seemed not to have changed much. He was tall and slim; his thick, wavy hair, still wet from the shower, brushed back and just lying on his collar, was now grey-blonde. He wore a fresh blue cotton shirt, open-necked, with his monogram, CC, stitched to the pocket, navy cords, and old tan loafers, no socks.
‘Please, come in.’
‘Thanks.’
Both hovered awkwardly in the small sitting room, Annie checking out the view across London over the top of the attic balustrade, Charles standing in the doorway looking at her curiously. He rubbed his hands together, grinned uncertainly, then said, ‘Drink? I’ve got a lovely little Chablis waiting in the fridge.’
‘Thank you, sounds great.’ She remembered her mother telling her he was ‘something in wine’.
He came back in with the bottle and two glasses, which he set down on the coffee table. The room was elegant and immaculate, as if no one lived there, the colours bland taupes, creams and browns, the furniture French Country style, the pictures nondescript line drawings of famous gardens. He must have seen her eyeing the decor.
‘I know, frightful, isn’t it? My wife had one of those interior-decorator chaps in, and now it looks like an expensive hotel room.’
Annie hesitated. ‘Not really.’ She was being polite and they both knew it. ‘Where do you live when you’re not here?’
‘Hambledon Valley … Henley way.’
She looked puzzled. ‘Isn’t that only about forty-five minutes from London?’
‘Correct. But I was done for being over the limit,’ he grinned ruefully, ‘Way over the limit, a while ago, and I’m in wine … I drink. Louisa, my wife, insisted we get this place, and she was right, I really can’t afford to lose my licence again. They’d throw away the key.’
He took his glass by the stem, holding it delicately as if it were a rare object, and swirled it twice, plunging his nose into the top of it and inhaling deeply. ‘Mmm. Heaven. Smell that.’ He looked over at her as he took a sip. She also put her nose to the glass and sniffed. ‘I love this wine,’ he went on. ‘It’s so fresh and citrusy, not too sweet … and with those wonderful flinty undertones.’
She smiled at his enthusiasm; he sounded like a wine review. She tried hers. It was indeed delicious. He nodded his approval.
‘So … you’re here on a mission. Shall we get it over with?’
She saw his boyish good looks suddenly cloud over. He must have worked it out, surely, she thought, her heart beating slightly faster as she put her wine down on the coffee table.
‘Alright. Well, I’m not quite sure how to put this.’ She took a slow breath. ‘Not sure what you remember about that night … with me … all those years ago …’
Charles looked away, clearly embarrassed. For a moment, Annie allowed herself to go back. It was summer, 1966. She had met Charles properly for the first time at the Westbury Academy’s graduation ball – Eleanor insisted on the grand name, although it was really an end-of-year dance for the girls and usually comprised around a hundred and twenty people – ‘graduates’ and their guests – at the Rembrandt Hotel in Knightsbridge. Annie had tried to get out of it; she loathed the sight of the snobby girls and their parents – they seemed to epitomise all that she hated about her mother’s aspirations – although she accepted she was probably classed as one of them back then. She had seen Charles around before that, picking up his sister, Venetia. He seemed like a god to Annie, with his blond good looks and devil-may-care posing against the iron railings of the building – part of which was her home, the other part her mother’s finishing school.
She’d just left school, feeling heady and thrilled by the prospect of being loose in London, free from formal education and the constraints of her Sussex boarding school. Her mother had told her she had a year, during which she would be expected to learn shorthand and typing, cooking, and how to drive. After that, she’d have to work, as a secretary, perhaps, with one of Eleanor’s chums in the City. Annie was happy with this; at that moment she had no ambition but to enjoy herself.
Her partner for the dance was one red-haired Torquil McVitie, a friend from childhood, but never a boyfriend. They’d gone to ballroom dance classes together at Miss Vacani’s in Knightsbridge, although she’d always known that Torquil’s genius lay in his wit, not his feet. Charles was at the same table, and had flirted outrageously with her all night. He had danced with her too, swirling her round the room with great panache. ‘Everyone’s watching,’ he’d whispered in her ear. Three agonising days later, he’d called. She remembered the weather being unbearably hot and humid that week.
‘Come round to my house,’ he’d said. ‘We can sit in the garden. My parents have gone to France for the summer and I’ve got the place to myself.’
She hadn’t told her mother she was seeing him. Eleanor would have panicked, Charles Carnegie being viewed as a ‘catch’. She would have begun nagging her daughter as to what to wear, how to stand, how to eat, which topics of conversation might amuse him – as if these things hadn’t already been instilled into her daily, for what seemed like her entire lifetime. She lied, said she was going to a nurses’ party with Jamie.
They had sat on two padded loungers in the garden of the Carnegie house, off High Street Kensington, drinking cold champagne filched from his parents’ cellar, and eating from a cereal bowl full of crisps. She hadn’t eaten all day, from nerves, and became very drunk very quickly. But Charles was easy to talk to, a beguiling companion. As the light faded, he brought a silver candelabra into the garden with three tall cream candles and put Otis Redding on the gramophone, opening the doors wide to the relaxed soul rhythm. They’d sucked orange ice lollies from the freezer and then lain on the cool grass and kissed, their lips and tongues still frozen. She remembered the clean, masculine heat of his body, the delicious softness of his mouth. Later, he had taken her hands and pulled her to her feet, guiding her, wobbly from desire and too much champagne, upstairs to his room.
The sex was surprising, a bit painful, and not that great for her. But she didn’t care. It was only part of the whole. She was lying naked with a man, and not just any man – Charles Carnegie. She was drunk, alive, free at last to be a woman.
She’d never heard from him again.
Charles was silent, maybe lost in the past as she had been.
‘You do remember, don’t you?’ She was both amused and shocked that he might not. The seminal moment of her life, upon which so much had hinged, and this man maybe didn’t even recall it?
Charles laughed. ‘I do remember. Of course I do. Not senile yet. It was hot, we were in the garden …’ He paused, his face taking on a look of doom. ‘Do I see where this is going?’
She nodded. ‘I thought you’d have twigged before now.’ She looked him directly in the eye. ‘We have a son together: Daniel.’
There was a moment of stunned silence. Charles looked blank, as if his brain was refusing to take in what she’d just said.
‘You mean … you mean you’ve brought up my child all these years – what is it? Thirty? More? – You’ve brought him up and never told me?’ He stared at her in disbelief.
She held her hands up to stop his injured tirade. ‘No. No, I didn’t bring him up. I … I gave him up for adoption when he was a baby.’
Charles took a huge breath, getting to his feet to pace the small room. He turned, his ha
nds on his hips, and looked at her in shock and bewilderment.
‘Wait! Let me understand this. You got pregnant that night, didn’t tell me, gave him away – again without telling me – and now … why are you telling me now?’
‘He got in touch. I’ve met him.’
He shook his head. ‘Christ …’ He slumped back in his chair, his head in his hands.
‘Do you have children?’ she asked.
He looked up, nodding distractedly. ‘A daughter. Amelia. She’s nearly twenty-five.’
‘Look, Charles, I’m really sorry. I know this must be a terrible shock for you. I should have told you at the time.’
‘Well, yes, you certainly should have.’ He threw his arms in the air. ‘I can’t believe it.’ He paused, thinking for a minute. ‘Why didn’t you have an abortion? Are you Catholic or something?’ His voice was accusatory.
‘I didn’t realise I was pregnant till it was too late,’ she said softly. ‘I was still having my periods … it happens sometimes.’
Charles shook his head again, reaching for his wine glass.
‘What was I supposed to do? You never called me,’ she said, suddenly defensive. ‘After that night I never heard from you again. Why would I have thought you’d be interested in being a father …? Would you have been?’
‘Don’t make this my fault.’ His tone was curt. He was looking at her with suspicion now. ‘Are you sure it’s … he’s mine? I mean, we were all sleeping with anything that moved back then. How do you know for certain?’
She’d been expecting this. ‘I have no concrete proof, if that’s what you’re asking. You know I’d never had sex before that night, but you only have my word for that.’ She shrugged. ‘Without DNA I can’t prove a thing.’
He seemed to accept that she was telling the truth, because he nodded.
‘Would you have been interested in being a father, at twenty-one, or whatever you were then?’ she asked again.
Charles pulled a face, shook his head in bewilderment. ‘That’s an impossible question. I don’t know. How can I know what I’d have felt this long after the event?’ He paused and there was a heavy silence in the small room. ‘No, probably not, if I’m honest. But these things aren’t that straightforward, are they? I certainly had a right to know, to make the decision for myself. This is my son you’re talking about, Annie, not just yours.’