Tessa observed the look of appeal Erin made to Pamela, saw Pamela nod in sympathy and reach out to press her sister’s hand. She felt exasperated by these concealed undercurrents. ‘Will someone please tell me what’s going on?’ she demanded.
Pamela looked intently at Hugo, who met her gaze with stony eyes. Crestfallen, Pamela stared at the floor.
‘Oh, it’s nothing – the usual story,’ said Erin, her Australian twang more accentuated. ‘I was a delinquent teenager, and Mum couldn’t cope. She’d just managed to buy the house next door and was going to knock through. It was such a big risk. If it hadn’t worked out she’d have lost everything, and then who knows what would have happened to us. She couldn’t afford any hint of scandal.’
Erin spoke so airily that Tessa was sure she was lying. She glanced at Hugo who was staring sightlessly out at the garden and was shocked by how wretched he looked, by the sorrowful lines in his face that, she realised with a jolt, had always been there.
‘What sort of scandal?’ Tessa asked.
‘Oh, nineteen-seventies Felixham! Nothing anyone would bother about in this day and age. Tell me about Mitch and Lauren. Are they doing well at school?’
Tessa ignored the question. ‘What happened?’ she insisted.
A sort of hush fell. Pamela gazed at Hugo and he glared back hopelessly with a faint shake of his head.
It was Erin who spoke, with a firmness that Tessa suspected was professional. ‘Nothing. I was difficult, so Averil packed me off to stay for a while with the only family she had. As it turned out, I adored my cousin Brenda, discovered I’m a city girl and was only too glad to shake the dust of this place off my feet, so I stayed put.’ Erin turned to Pamela, touching her arm. ‘I’ve been fine, really. No need to worry about me. I’ve got a fantastic life in Sydney.’
Pamela burst into tears
‘What on earth’s the big mystery?’ demanded Tessa, beginning to feel afraid.
Hugo sighed and sat back, defeated. He nodded to Erin. ‘Tell her, if that’s why you’re here. Don’t drag it out.’
But Erin shook her head, occupying herself in comforting Pamela.
‘Tell her,’ he ordered.
‘There’s no need,’ she protested. ‘Really.’
‘Then why are you here?’ he asked coldly.
Pamela took a deep breath, trying to control her tears, and turned to Tessa. ‘Your grandmother sent Erin away soon after you were born,’ she said finally. ‘Because you were born.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Tessa, hearing her own voice as if from very far away.
‘Erin was barely sixteen,’ said Pamela. ‘Little more than a child herself.’
‘But what has that got to do with me?’
‘I had a baby,’ said Erin.
Except for birdsong from the garden, the room was silent. Pamela’s face softened and her shoulders dropped as if a huge burden had been lifted.
‘What happened to it?’ Tessa asked, already dreading the reply.
‘We wanted you, Tessie!’ Hugo’s voice shook uncharacteristically. ‘Welcomed you!’
‘I knew Pamela would take good care of you because she’d always looked after me so well,’ said Erin. ‘Loved me.’
‘But that’s ridiculous! You would’ve told me. Why wouldn’t you?’ Out of habit, Tessa looked to her father for verification. Hugo’s answering look of shame was terrifying. She turned back to Erin. ‘You’re saying that I was that baby? That you’re my mother?’
Erin looked to Pamela for permission before she answered. ‘Yes.’
Tessa sought wildly for some escape. ‘But there’s nothing on my birth certificate.’
‘No,’ said Hugo. ‘The adoption went through just before the law was changed.’ He looked accusingly at Pamela. ‘When people still believed it was best to ignore the truth.’
Pamela uttered a wail of contrition. ‘I took you away from her. I stole my sister’s child.’
FOUR
Refusing Hugo’s offer of a lift, Tessa took the footpath home through the tall reeds, grateful for some space in which to process her shock. At first she had expected Erin to leave, to offer her and her parents some private time together; but Pamela had been adamant that her little sister would not be cast out a second time, and so it was Tessa who had said she must get back to work, and had left their house feeling unfairly usurped.
Piecing together her scant knowledge of the past, Tessa tried to make some headway against her astonished sense of betrayal. All the years they must have guarded her so assiduously from any suspicion of the truth; all those conversations – innocent childish questions or remarks about family traits and resemblances – that had been steered so firmly away from difficult waters. How carefully her parents must have monitored themselves, how false so many of their words and gestures!
She knew how hard it was to defy Grandma Averil: she’d been a tyrant. From the moment Averil had decreed – as Pamela had just explained – that the disgraced Erin was to disappear and Pamela and Hugo should pass her baby off as their own, it would have been useless to argue against her. But why, after Erin’s banishment, had it remained so impossible to share the secret with the person most closely affected by it, to ignore a child’s right to know who she was? Had there really been no point during the past thirty-seven years when she couldn’t have been trusted with the truth?
Tessa felt bitterly disappointed that Hugo and Pamela had failed to take charge. Their lack of certainty, of ownership, left her exposed and defenceless. No wonder she had grown up with a sense of not fully belonging, of being kept at arm’s length.
What hurt most was that Pamela’s grief today had not been for the sacrifice of her family to this divisive and inhibiting secret, but remorse at stealing her sister’s child. Even when Tessa left the house it had been Hugo who accompanied her to the end of the driveway, who promised to call. Pamela had hung back, giving precedence to Erin, who had laid a powdered cheek next to Tessa’s and kissed her lightly goodbye.
Had either of her parents ever really wanted her? Clearly Erin, her real mother, had not. And maybe Pamela had resented having her sister’s illegitimate baby foisted upon her. Perhaps even Hugo, always so decent and loyal, had had no choice but to support his wife and make the best of it. The horrible idea that maybe all these years they had merely tolerated a child who meant very little to them made her want to run away.
As she walked, she tried to let the familiar movement of clouds and water claim her attention and untangle her emotions. The tide was flowing out in earnest now, and as she approached the metal footbridge she saw how the river’s central channel had narrowed to expose the mudbanks to the attention of wading birds. A wind blew in off the sea, whipping up the water rushing in the opposite direction, echoing her overwhelming sense that the elements surrounding her were dangerously in flux.
She stopped on the footbridge where her thoughts reverted to Sam: did this lack of authentic connection at the very heart of her life explain why she had always feared an emptiness at the heart of her marriage too? She realised suddenly how hungry she was to talk to him, how he was the only person in the world she wanted to tell, or who could possibly comfort her.
Tessa dialled his number on her mobile and he picked up after a couple of rings, greeting her by name. Deciding not to burden him immediately, she spoke with false optimism: ‘Sam, you’re never going to believe what I’ve just been told! Can I call in for five minutes?’
‘Sure,’ he agreed. ‘I’ve been wanting to speak to you about something anyway. See you soon.’
Tessa walked on feeling a tiny bit lighter. However horrible and unsettling, perhaps Erin’s revelation would help her to understand herself better, might even add an extra dimension to her existence. After all, nothing had actually been lost – Hugo and Pamela remained her mum and dad, and Sam was still her husband. But now maybe there could be room for her to grow, to gain new perspectives, to discover parts of herself that, busy with marriage and kids a
nd remodelling the business, had become enmeshed and lost. Listening to the racket of the gulls swooping across the shallow current and fighting over whatever food was to be found, she reflected that there was, after all, a strange elation at being at the centre of such unexpected drama, an enticing sense of ever-expanding horizons. She couldn’t wait to talk to Sam, to explain why things had gone wrong and persuade him to come home for a fresh start together.
She found him in the brasserie – in what was going to be the brasserie – looking more youthful than ever in a dusty boiler suit, his hair flopping over his eyes. The major structural work on remodelling the former joinery and its cobbled courtyard out front was nearing completion, and he was hoping to open in good time for the summer season. Tessa calmed herself by admiring how well the shiny slickness of the bar would eventually work against the cleaned-up brickwork and sanded wood floors before telling him about Erin and her revelation.
‘Wow,’ said Sam. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Confused. Hurt. Amazed. Don’t know what to feel yet.’
‘And your poor parents. Pretty tough on them, her just turning up out of the blue like that, dropping such a bombshell.’
‘If she hadn’t, I might never have found out.’
‘No, but she could’ve warned you all that she was coming. Given them a chance to tell you without being bounced into it like that.’
‘Maybe it had to happen this way. Though it’s pretty weird to think they might never have told me otherwise. Not sure quite how I get my head round that, how to go on trusting them.’
His shrug reminded her how easily he always sidestepped confrontation, even other people’s. ‘So what’s she like?’ he asked.
‘Don’t know yet. She’s not here for long, though.’
‘Right.’
‘She’d love to meet you. And the kids, obviously.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes! Why not?’
‘Do the kids need to know?’
‘Of course!’
‘They’ve a lot going on right now, and it doesn’t really affect them, does it?’
‘I’m not keeping it a secret,’ she declared stubbornly.
‘Fair enough. But it might be an idea to make sure you’ve got used to the idea first and are Ok with it all.’
‘I am. I think it helps make sense of stuff.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Like that I never one hundred per cent belonged. That I wasn’t complete in some way.’
Sam shrugged. ‘All kids are like that, aren’t they? Go through the fantasy of imagining they’re adopted. You and your mum and dad always seemed pretty tight to me.’
‘I’m not saying we weren’t. It’s how I felt.’
‘Ok.’
‘And in my case, turns out that adoption isn’t a fantasy.’ She looked at him, hoping for more of a response.
‘Sure. But it’s not really adoption, is it? It’s not as if your family gave you up, handed you over to strangers.’
‘No. That’s right.’ Tessa assumed they were both inevitably recalling the same moment in their own lives: Pamela and Hugo was been delighted when she’d confessed that she’d accidentally fallen pregnant with Mitch when still at college. Even though her parents had only met Sam a couple of times, and she and Sam had not imagined a life together, Pamela and Hugo had made everything fall perfectly into place. Erin, on the other hand, had been sent packing thousands of miles away from home, only weeks after giving birth. ‘No,’ Tessa agreed, feeling some sympathetic kinship with the younger Erin. ‘It was Erin they gave up. Not me.’
‘So you’re Ok with it?’ Sam repeated. ‘It’s not going to ruin your life or anything?’
‘No. I’m angry that they never told me, that I’ve had to live such a lie all these years, but I’m glad that’s over. I think they’re relieved too. And I’m sure in the end it’ll explain things, open stuff up.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe about us too.’
‘Yeah?’ Sam looked her warily.
‘About maybe why I find it difficult to say what I want.’ She moved closer, touched his arm. ‘I’m sure it’ll be good for us,’ she said. ‘Make it easier to start over.’
‘Right.’ He licked his lips. ‘Because I’ve got something to tell you as well.’
‘What?’ She hadn’t meant to snap at him, but she was tired, and had expected him to enter more fully into what all this meant for her. After all, it wasn’t every day you discovered you weren’t who you thought you were. But she saw the shutters come down and wanted to shake him.
‘You’ve probably already guessed.’ He gave a feeble laugh. ‘I’m moving in with Nula this week.’
‘Nula?’
‘Nula Simmonds,’ he reminded her, striving to sound patient. ‘She’s part of the company that did all the design work here. You’ve met her.’
The mist cleared: Sam had been complaining for a while about the lack of space in his one-room flat. ‘But that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,’ she said eagerly. ‘There’s no need for you to go on renting, is there? Not now this place is nearly done. Come home!’
His hesitation was like a siren going off. ‘You mean you really don’t know?’ He looked hurt, as if she were deliberately making this harder for him.
‘Know what?’ asked Tessa, realising that she did indeed already know what he was going to say.
‘We’re going to live together.’
Her distress burst out of her: ‘What about us?’
‘It’s been almost two years since I went to London.’
‘But we’re still married, still a family.’
Sam licked his lips again, and then reached out to hook her fingers into his. ‘It was you who encouraged me to leave in the first place, to aim higher. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.’
Tessa recognised that smile, knew he was cajoling her into doing the rest for him, but she was too shocked to speak.
He looked around at the half-finished building. ‘It’s time we organised our business finances properly too.’
‘We can do that. Just talk to the accountant.’
He swallowed hard and let go of her hand. ‘Two years is long enough for a legal separation.’
‘Don’t leave me!’
‘You’re upset about what happened today. We can discuss this another time.’
‘No!’ Tessa felt afraid of yet more ground shifting beneath her feet. Dazed, she struggled to stand firm. ‘Is this what you want?’
Sam nodded. ‘We should get a divorce.’
‘What about the kids?’ She didn’t know what else to say to sway him, to win him back. She thought for a moment that she had never seen him so implacable, but then reconsidered: it was always by stealth that Sam got his own way in the end.
‘It’ll be better,’ he was saying now. ‘Clearer. And Nula’s got a spare bedroom so they’ll be able to stay with me. We thought we’d buy a sofa bed for the living room, so they don’t have to share a room if they don’t want to.’
‘So it’s all sorted?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do we tell them? They’ll be devastated.’
‘Not really. They’re cool with it. They like Nula.’
‘They already know?’
‘That I’m moving in with her? Yes.’ He hung his head, his hair dropping forwards. ‘Sorry. I assumed you did too. That you’d realised.’
The hint of injury in Sam’s tone reminded Tessa how conveniently he always assumed that people magically knew about matters he didn’t want to deal with. How his own sense of injury enabled him to ignore the pain he was inflicting. It had been the same when he’d returned from London and didn’t move back home. And, despite her misgivings at the time, she had allowed it to happen, telling herself she was being civilised and mature, just as she seemed to be doing now. Except that this time the pain was much worse.
‘I don’t want you to leave. I want you to come home.’
‘Be happy for me,
Tessa,’ he warned, brushing his hair back with an impatient gesture.
His earnest brown eyes looked at her in his old pleading way, and with a sinking heart, Tessa knew she would pander to him as she always did, would creep away and lick her wounds in private. ‘I am happy for you, Sam. Honestly.’ She even gave him an impulsive hug and a kiss. Drawing back, she added: ‘Are you sure, though, that Lauren and Mitch are Ok with this? I mean, it’s a massive change. Maybe we shouldn’t involve them yet? So soon?’
‘It’s not soon, Tessa. It’s been two years. Nula’s here to stay. I’m in love with her.’
Tessa felt as if he had smacked her. Reeling, she did not hear Sam’s next question. ‘So did they tell you the rest?’ he repeated.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, who your real father is?’
FIVE
Mitch was annoyed. But then his kid sister was always annoying these days. Right now she was taking ten minutes – ten minutes – to make a sandwich. For herself, not him. She was so intent on how much butter to use, and cutting off every bit of crust, that she hadn’t bothered to ask if he wanted one. The thought of sitting here and watching the weirdly precise way in which she’d started to eat recently was more than he could handle.
He was about to disappear upstairs when his mum came in. She looked a bit hacked off too. Mitch guessed it was because she was running late for the arrival of this evening’s guests. ‘Shall I make you a cup of tea?’ he asked.
‘In a minute. I need to talk to you both first.’
Mitch slid back into his chair as Tessa sat down at the kitchen table. This sounded serious.
‘I’ve just spoken to your dad.’
Lauren continued nibbling around the edges of her sandwich, her gaze fixed on Tessa.
‘He told me he’s met someone. And as it looks like she’s going to be part of your lives, I—’
‘We know all about him and Nula,’ interrupted Lauren.
‘Yes, that’s what he said.’
Mitch didn’t trust the tightly casual tone of Tessa’s next question: ‘How long have you known?’
The Bad Mother Page 3