by Ruth Heald
‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
‘I just need to go,’ she says. ‘Now.’
‘Do you want me to take you to the hospital?’
‘No, no, I’m fine.’
And with that, she hurries off into the dark.
* * *
When I go back inside the house, Paula is sitting with the twins in the living room.
‘What did she want?’ she asks.
‘She wants me to pay rent.’
Paula laughs. ‘Good job she fainted, then. It meant she left in a hurry.’ Paula smiles to herself. ‘I don’t think she’ll be back.’
Thirty-Two
Ian comes round the next day, insisting he wants to see the twins.
‘Are you here to apologise for your wife?’ I ask when I see him at the door.
‘She mentioned she’d visited. I’m sorry if she disturbed you.’
‘She asked me to pay rent,’ I say angrily. ‘I can’t afford it. I’ve started teaching piano, but it only just about covers food. Anyway, you should be paying me maintenance for the twins, I shouldn’t be paying you.’
Ian puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘We’ve got a lot to discuss. Can I come in and see the girls?’
‘No,’ I say. He’s been calling for days, but I can’t face handing my children over to him. Not after everything he’s done.
‘When can I see them, Katie? I miss them.’
‘It’s not like you made any effort to see them in the first days of their lives, is it? When you told me you were in Thailand.’
‘I didn’t realise they’d been born. Honestly.’
Paula appears behind me at the door. ‘I hope this is just a flying visit.’
‘Paula,’ he says. ‘Still here, are you? We’re trying to have a private discussion.’
‘Anything you can say to Katie, you can say to me.’
I turn to her. I know she’s only trying to help, but I’d prefer to have this conversation on my own. ‘It’s OK, Paula. Can you go to the twins?’
‘Don’t let him in,’ Paula says. She looks me in the eyes. ‘Promise me.’
‘I won’t.’
One of the babies starts to cry and Paula reluctantly retreats into the house.
‘I can’t believe she’s still here,’ Ian says.
‘I need her to look after the twins while I work to pay for food.’
Ian runs his hand through his dark hair, looking regretful. ‘I wish things hadn’t turned out like this.’
‘It’s your fault, Ian.’
‘Please let me see the girls. I miss them.’
‘We can sort something out,’ I say. Despite everything Ian’s done, I still want him to have a relationship with his daughters. I missed out on my own father when I was growing up, and I don’t want them to.
‘Is there any chance I could see them now? Take them out for a bit?’
‘Now’s not a good time,’ I say.
‘I wish you could forgive me, Katie.’
‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’ I laugh bitterly. ‘Everything you’ve told me has been a lie. Sabrina told me that you don’t have a business. That you inherited this house and you don’t have any other properties.’
I can see Ian’s mind racing as he tries to think of an explanation. ‘The house was just the start. I was building up the business slowly.’
‘Extremely slowly.’
‘Well, yeah. It turns out that it’s not going to work anyway. I came to tell you we’re going to have to sell the house.’
‘Because you can’t afford it? Because you don’t have a property empire, or any money at all to your name?’
‘Sabrina wants to sell it. She put some money into it so I wouldn’t have to sell it to pay the inheritance tax. And now she wants to sell up anyway. I’m devastated. It was my father’s house. I used to visit as a kid, when my father lived here with his new wife. I always wanted to live here.’ He looks round the hallway wistfully.
‘Your dream came true in the end.’ A tiny part of me is starting to soften, to feel a little bit sorry for him.
‘Yeah. Once I realised I’d inherited the house, I felt vindicated. It was finally my turn. It was going to be the first property in my portfolio.’
‘Why did you lie about having a property business?’
Ian shrugs. ‘It always impresses people, having my own business.’
‘But you didn’t have your own business.’
‘I would have done soon enough. I was going to do up the house. Make a fortune.’
‘But then I needed somewhere to live with the twins,’ I say. ‘And that changed your plans.’
‘Yeah. I didn’t get the keys for ages. There was so much paperwork. By the time I actually got the keys, you were ready to move in.’
‘And you didn’t see it before?’ This explains why the house was falling apart when I first saw it.
‘Well, no. I thought it would be a bit dated, but I didn’t think it would be in such a bad state. I hadn’t realised my father had been in a care home for the final years of his life. I arranged for a waste removal company to clear any junk from the main rooms. But I only picked up the keys myself the day before you moved in. I had to give them to you that evening and I didn’t have time to check the house first.’ I remember how confusing it was when the house wasn’t the one Amy and I saw on Rightmove. We had been completely convinced that was the one I was moving into. But Ian had inherited this house, so it wouldn’t have been advertised online.
‘You completely fooled me. I thought we had a future together.’
‘I know, Katie. It’s all gone wrong.’ He says it as if he takes no responsibility for the way things have turned out. ‘I’m so angry with Sabrina. Even if we just did the house up a little bit more, we’d make a huge profit. But now she’s not up for that. She wants to sell it. And I can’t keep it without her.’
‘You seem more concerned about losing the house than losing me.’ I try to keep my voice steady, but my lip quivers.
‘You know I wanted to be with you,’ Ian says. ‘I’ve stayed with Sabrina because it’s convenient for both of us, and because I was worried about how she’d cope if I left. But if we sell the house then we’ll have enough money to separate. I think she’s stable enough now to cope without me. You and I could get our own place together.’
I laugh bitterly. I don’t believe a word he says. ‘It’s over between us. It was over as soon as I found out you’d lied to me about Thailand, that you were with your wife when our twins were born.’
He looks at his feet. ‘I didn’t intend to be with Sabrina that week, I intended to be with you. But I was being blackmailed.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I got an anonymous email threatening to tell you that I wasn’t who I said I was. They were going to tell you I was married and that the property business didn’t exist. They said I had to stay away from you until I’d paid to keep them quiet.’
‘You were being threatened?’ I stare at him, surprised. There’s so much he hasn’t told me.
‘They wanted £20,000. I didn’t have it. I was planning to stay away until I’d negotiated some kind of deal with them or persuaded them not to tell you anything. I thought if I told you I was going abroad on business it would buy time. But I went back to Sabrina. I was planning to come back to you as soon as I’d sorted it out.’
A thought occurs to me. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t Sabrina who was blackmailing you?’ I wouldn’t put it past her. She said she hadn’t known about me until I turned up on her doorstep, but perhaps that had been a lie. Perhaps she had wanted to keep Ian away from me when I needed him most. To have him back with her.
‘I don’t think so. It’s not her style. She prefers face-to-face manipulation.’
‘Did you pay up?’
‘No. I didn’t have the money. I explained that over and over and whoever it was eventually seemed to lose interest. The emails stopped. I was planning to come back to you when I got all
your texts through to say the babies had been born.’
‘I can’t believe all that time you were only the other side of London. You could have rushed over when I was in labour. But you didn’t see your babies for a week.’
Ian sighs. ‘I know I’ve lied about a lot of things, but I told the truth about my phone not working properly. None of your messages came through until days later.’
‘What about my calls?’
‘I didn’t receive any missed calls.’
I frown. ‘None?’ Surely if he was in the UK, he’d have received them.
‘No. And your text messages came through all at once. As soon as I got them I came over. I would never have deliberately missed seeing my twins.’
My stomach twists. I feel so confused. Despite everything, I believe him.
* * *
‘I need to move out,’ I tell Paula miserably over lunch.
‘Oh?’ she says.
‘Ian’s selling the house.’
‘Surely you should stay here as long as you can. Ian owes you that.’
I shake my head. ‘It’s too unstable. I don’t know when he’ll chuck me out for good. And anyway, it’s time to move on, time for me to start our lives as a family of three, not living day-to-day all the time.’
Paula nods, but the atmosphere in the kitchen is tense. ‘Where will you go?’ she asks.
‘A one-bed flat. At least an hour from the city. It’s the closest I think I’ll be able to afford.’
‘What about the piano? Your lessons?’
‘I’ll have to leave that all behind. Maybe in a few years I’ll be able to afford to start again. Buy a piano and teach. But not now. I need a stable life for the twins. A new life.’
Paula frowns. ‘I understand,’ she says. ‘But I’ll miss you.’
‘I know,’ I reply. ‘I’ll miss you too.’
‘I can help you look for flats if you like. Ask around friends. Ring round some estate agents.’
I smile. ‘That would be great.’
‘In fact,’ Paula says, smiling back at me, ‘I have a friend who’s about to move out of her one-bed flat in Enfield to go abroad. I could ask her if you could have a first look at the flat before it goes on the market. She really wants someone who’ll look after it properly while she’s away, so I’m sure she’d make sure the price was reasonable for the right person. Do you want me to ask her about it?’
‘That would be brilliant. Thanks.’ I smile at the thought of finding a new flat and putting Ian and this house behind me.
16
We’re finishing dinner when Dad returns from the pub. We smell him before we see him, the stale smoke stuck to his clothes.
He’s in a good mood, and when my mother rises from the dinner table to greet him, he wraps his arms around her and kisses her passionately. I glance at my sister, but she doesn’t look back. I can smell his breath from here and I try not to cough.
He turns to my sister and kisses her on the cheek. I can tell she hates it, hates the bristles of his beard on her cheek, hates the sweaty, smoky smell that surrounds him. Sometimes I can feel exactly what she feels at the same time. It’s like we’re connected by an invisible cord, binding us together.
She doesn’t pull away despite her discomfort. Instead she smiles at him. ‘Hi, Dad.’
‘I bought you a present.’ He digs around in his jeans pocket and produces a beer mat, blue and green and soggy at the edges.
‘Thank you,’ she says, and this time I can see she means it. She has a whole collection in her room. She likes to show me them, to make me jealous.
This one looks interesting. I like the way the blue and the green merge into each other in the pattern, and the curly writing on the front.
‘Can I have a look?’ I ask.
‘No,’ my sister says, and pulls it away protectively.
‘It’s a present for your sister,’ Dad says. ‘Don’t you understand that?’
I look down at the floor.
‘Didn’t you get one for her?’ Mum asks.
‘Of course not. She doesn’t deserve one.’
Thirty-Three
Mum and I wander round the local shops together. I’m hoping that this will be a chance to repair my relationship with her after I pushed her away when the twins were born. I’ve reluctantly let Ian take the twins out and shopping’s a good distraction from their absence. Mum knows Ian’s looking after the twins, she just doesn’t know we’ve split up.
She seems in a good mood, spending money left, right and centre on the twins. Clothes, toys, new blankets. Everything she sees, she seems to want to buy. I’m so relieved. I can hardly afford to buy anything myself. My child benefit hasn’t come through yet, and I haven’t agreed maintenance with Ian. I don’t want the twins to go without.
I can see the joy in Mum’s face when she selects things, how much she loves taking on the grandmother role. Maybe I could let her have a bigger part in my twins’ life. Just because she wasn’t the perfect parent doesn’t mean she can’t help out with the twins. I can see how much she wants to get involved; how much she wants to be there for me and my family.
Mum leads me into yet another shop and we go to the womenswear section.
‘I thought I could buy something for you too. A gift,’ she says.
‘Mum, you really don’t need to.’
‘Think of it as a “new mother” gift. As a congratulations for the birth, but a present for you instead of the twins.’
She starts pulling winter dresses off a rail. None of them are really my style, but I nod appreciatively anyway. She insists I try them on.
We start walking to the changing rooms, but on the way I freeze.
Ahead of us is an ash-blonde woman pushing a double buggy.
It can’t be her.
But I recognise the buggy. My buggy.
I flush with anger. Just the other day, Ian was telling me that he and Sabrina were married in name only. And now she’s here, looking after my twins. She’s stolen my whole life.
Just at that moment, Ian appears beside her.
Luckily, Mum hasn’t noticed him. She’s looking through the dresses that are slung over her arm, going through the prices. But we’re on a collision course with Sabrina and Ian, who’ve stopped to chat in front of us.
Just then, Ian looks up.
‘Katie,’ he says, running his hand through his hair as if for once he might be embarrassed. ‘Hi.’
Mum’s attention shifts. ‘Oh, hi Ian. How are the twins doing? Great that you could take them out for the day. Katie and I are having a lovely time shopping.’
‘No problem,’ Ian says, looking from me to Mum and back again, weighing up the situation.
Sabrina has been inspecting a pair of trousers, but now she turns, one hand still on the buggy with my twins inside.
Blood rushes to my head, as she introduces herself to Mum. ‘Hi,’ she says, ‘I’m Sabrina. You must be Katie’s mother.’ She looks at me.
Mum only misses a single beat. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’m Jackie.’ She looks at Ian and then back at Sabrina, then into the buggy with the twins.
‘Are you helping with the twins?’ she asks.
‘You could say that.’ Sabrina smiles serenely. I want to scream at her, to shout at Ian. How could he let her look after my babies? I can’t bear to see her with them, her hands gripped tightly around the buggy handle as if the twins belong to her. They’re my daughters. But as much as I want to grab them off her, to berate Ian, I need to get Mum away from them.
I loop my arm through Mum’s. ‘We’d better go. The queue to the changing room’s getting longer by the second.’
‘OK,’ Mum says, looking up. ‘Well, nice to meet you, Sabrina.’
As soon as we’re out of earshot, she whispers, ‘Who was that?’
‘Oh, just Ian’s sister,’ I say quickly. ‘She comes round sometimes to help.’
‘You never let me or Melissa help.’
‘Well, you should come ro
und more often.’
Mum beams. ‘I’d like that.’ As we join the queue to try on clothes, I breathe a sigh of relief. I can see that she’s so distracted by thoughts of being a doting grandmother, she isn’t questioning who Sabrina really is.
* * *
Later, we have lunch, piles of shopping bags under our table. I need to ask Mum about what Melissa said about Dad, but I don’t know how to broach the subject.
‘Katie,’ Mum says, when the starters come. ‘You know I’ll always be there for you, don’t you?’
I nod, touched by how nice she’s being.
‘And you know that if you need help with anything – childcare, money, anything at all – you can always come to me?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’
‘OK, so now I’m going to say something that I think might upset you, but I’m afraid I have to say it.’
I take a deep breath. Is she about to tell me about Dad?
The starters are in front of us now, and I know she’s deliberately chosen a time when she knows I can’t escape.
‘What, Mum?’ I say, scratching the scar at the top of my arm anxiously.
‘That woman – Sabrina. She wasn’t Ian’s sister, was she?’
‘Oh,’ I say, surprised. I flush and look down at my plate. There’s nowhere to hide. ‘No, she’s not his sister.’
‘I didn’t think so. When you were in the changing room, I saw them together. They seemed a lot closer than brother and sister.’
I have a sinking feeling in my stomach. I can’t hide things from her any longer. ‘She’s his wife,’ I say, ashamed to even look at her.
‘Oh, no,’ Mum says. She reaches her hand across the table. ‘I thought that might be it. Ian always seemed too good to be true.’
Too good to be true? She never said anything.
‘When did you find out?’ she asks. And then I see the thought cross her mind. ‘Or did you always know he was married? From the beginning?’
‘No, Mum. I just found out recently. You don’t need to worry. I’ve chucked him out.’