‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
She answered with one word, ‘You.’
‘What about me?’ I fortified myself with a sip of my own drink because I wasn’t sure what was coming next.
‘Why are you really here, Rob?’ she asked.
Maybe it was... no, definitely it was the alcohol that loosened my tongue because I told her.
‘Running away.’
It was too late, the words were out and, as my mum has said many a time, once something has been said, there’s no unsaying it.
Angie took another sip of her drink, throwing her head back as she swallowed. When she lowered her head, she looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Knew it.’
Had she? How could she? I was about to ask her but I didn’t get chance because she had another question.
‘What are you running away from?’
I’m pretty sure that even in my drink-muddled state I could have made something up, but I didn’t. ‘From a girl,’ I said.
She nodded slowly and said, ‘OK,’ as she screwed her lips together and leaned forward so her chair wasn’t tipping backwards anymore.
She didn’t ask me to but I told her anyway and once I started talking the words just poured out of me.
‘My girlfriend got pregnant.’ I said the words slowly. ‘I wasn’t ready to be a parent. I think if I’d have stayed Michelle would have wanted to get married and I definitely wasn’t ready to be a husband.’ After a large gulp of whisky, I told her how I’d made the decision to do a runner and left without actually facing anyone. I told her about the letters that I’d left and what I’d written in them. I told her everything, and then I tossed what was left in my glass down my neck and said I was getting another. Angie held her glass up to show that she’d have a refill too and I noticed that she smiled at me.
As I poured the drinks I realised that I didn’t feel drunk anymore. I still took my time walking back to the table, not because I was unsteady, but because I didn’t know what Angie was going to say next – or if I wanted to hear it.
She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, which felt more like hours. I don’t like being judged for what I do but I knew that what Angie thought mattered to me.
‘Have you had nothing to do with them since you left?’ she asked, sounding sceptical, like she found it hard to believe that what I was saying could be true even though I’d assured her that it was.
‘What about the CSA?’ she asked.
I didn’t understand what she meant. Sorry, I don’t really keep up with current affairs or whatever they call them, so I didn’t know what she was talking about. She explained who they were and what they did.
‘A friend of mine went to them so that she could get money from her baby’s dad,’ she told me, and she laughed when I reminded her that Michelle didn’t know where I was. ‘No, sweetheart,’ she laughed, ‘but I’m sure the authorities could track you down.’ The fact that she called me sweetheart took me by surprise, even though she’d said it in a jokey way, and I didn’t know what to say. So Angie kept talking. ‘Which means that she probably didn’t keep the baby.’
‘What?’ I thought I hadn’t heard her properly.
‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘If... Michelle was it?’ I nodded. ‘If Michelle had kept the baby, the CSA would have been on to you for child support. I’m guessing that you paid tax in your old job and you pay tax here, so it would have been a doddle for them to find you.’
It made sense, I suppose, but I still struggled with the idea that Michelle hadn’t kept the baby. What had she done with it? She wouldn’t have got rid of it and I really couldn’t imagine her giving it up for adoption. That only left one thing. She must have lost it. Yes, I decided. That was it. Michelle had had a miscarriage.
Maybe it had been for the best.
Later on, after Angie and I had made love and she was lying beside me resting her head on my chest, I thought of Michelle and how it used to feel to have her lying in my arms. I wondered how she was now. How she was coping.
I was sure that Angie was right about the baby, about there not being one, or – at least – not one that Michelle was taking care of. Not one that I was responsible for anyway.
I know this probably sounds ridiculous but I felt sad. Not for me, because I’d not wanted anything to do with a baby, but for Michelle. She’d have made a great mum. I knew that she would have taken a miscarriage badly and I hoped that she was over it.
In the morning I woke to the sound of rattling cups in the kitchen and a couple of minutes later Angie appeared carrying two mugs of coffee. She was wearing the T-shirt that I had thrown on the back of a chair the night before and it did little to cover her modesty, not that she had much to cover. I sat up and she climbed in beside me. She asked me if I was all right and smiled as she handed me my cup.
She didn’t mention what we had spoken about the night before. In fact, she never did.
Angie moved in with me shortly after that and I was happy, really happy, for the first time in ages.
TOM
The boys looked at their new cousin with varying degrees of interest.
Michael stood on tiptoe to try and see into the Moses basket to find out what all the fuss was about. Anthony held his finger within the baby’s reach and smiled when it was grabbed, while Simon’s eyes flicked from the baby to her parents and then back at the baby. He was a bright boy and the last time he had seen his Auntie Jane she’d had a big stomach. Now her stomach was much flatter and there was a baby. I thought he’d probably worked out that the two things were connected and fully expected to have an interesting conversation with him later.
‘Where did baby Emily come from?’ he asked, not long after we got home.
We’d talked about how we would approach this subject when it was brought up so I said, ‘From Auntie Jane’s tummy,’ in as matter of fact a tone as I could manage.
‘How did she get there?’ He didn’t look up from the toy farm that he was playing with.
‘Uncle Craig put her there,’ Michelle said in the same tone as I had used.
He stopped what he was doing and chewed his lip then he looked at his mum and asked, ‘ Did I come from your tummy?’
‘Yes, you did,’ she said it softly and smiled.
‘And did Daddy put me there?’ He made it sound like a ridiculous idea.
Michelle stretched her arm out so that she could stroke his head, ‘Well you didn’t get there by yourself did you,’ she said.
He went back to placing the cows in a circle and the conversation seemed to be over. Michelle and I shared a smile and a sigh of relief.
We didn’t consciously hide Robert’s existence from our sons. We had mentioned Uncle Robert in passing, you know things like ‘Daddy and Uncle Robert did this or that,’ but we’d never really been sure if anything had registered. Apparently enough had because, one day not long after his seventh birthday Simon asked, ‘Why don’t we see Uncle Robert?’
We were sitting at the kitchen table when he asked the question. Michelle was serving up the Sunday lunch and I can still see her as she stopped mid-action with a spoonful of mashed potato halfway between the saucepan and a plate. I could see her hand shaking and that familiar look of fear in her eyes.
‘He doesn’t live here,’ I said as I poured some orange juice into the beaker that Simon was holding.
‘Where does he live?’ he lifted the beaker to his mouth and slurped loudly. I told him that I didn’t know and hoped that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t. Simon had another question, ‘Doesn’t Gran know where he lives?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, grateful that Michelle put his food in front of him at that point. Simon’s stomach always came first and the conversation was finished, though I suspected only temporarily.
A couple of nights later, when the boys were tucked up in bed, I sat on the sofa with the newspaper open on my lap. I doubt I was reading it because I rarely do. I tend to just flick through. Anyway, that’s
what I was doing when Michelle came into the room carrying Simon’s drawing pad. She opened it up and handed it to me.
I looked at the picture and asked, ‘What’s this?’
‘Something Simon drew today,’ she said as she sat on the other end of the sofa and watched for my reaction.
I saw a collection of people of different shapes and sizes and I realised that they were a family. It was our family. Michelle and I were there holding hands with each other and there were three children standing in front of us. There wasn’t a lot of difference in size between the boys but we could identify them by the fact that for some reason they were each wearing their favourite hat. There were two sets of grandparents at one side and at the other side was Craig with Jane who was holding a ball that I assumed was baby Emily.
I didn’t notice at first, but Simon had drawn another figure. It was alone and smaller than the rest which made it look like it was standing in the background.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked.
Michelle’s voice cracked as she told me. ‘Uncle Robert.’
We’d made a conscious decision not to hide the fact that I had a brother, and now Simon was taking an interest in him. We only had ourselves to blame really, but what choice had we had? I did have a brother.
Simon had drawn his mythical uncle off to the side of the family group, there but not quite part of it. On the outside.
We spent the next nine years hoping it would stay that way.
ROBERT
Angie and I were good together. We were good for each other. She knew all about my past and over the next few years she told me about hers – and neither of us judged the other person. We made a good team. So much so that when Phil died and Gloria decided to sell The Brown Bull, Angie and I bought it. Well, I’d been running it for years and, as Gloria said, it was practically mine anyway.
She gave us a good price – too good a price if I’m honest – but the place held too many memories for her and I think she just wanted rid of it. I had to come up with a business plan for the bank of course, but that was a piece of piss because during the time that I had been managing The Bull, turnover had increased and profits were up.
So, there I was, thirty-two years old with a business of my own. As a young lad I’d dreamt of being my own boss, though I’d never seen myself as a pub landlord. Do you know what, though? I couldn’t get the smile off my face the day my name went above the door.
That day was in August so the place had been bouncing with holiday makers as well as the loyal locals that saw us through the off-season. Like some sort of madman I offered everybody a drink on the house.
‘You’ll not make a profit that way,’ Angie teased as we passed each other on our way to different ends of the bar and I smiled at her.
‘We’ll not make a profit,’ I corrected, ‘and if it bothers you that much you can take it out of my hide later.’
She smiled at that but I don’t know if it was the reminder that we were in this together or the prospect of rampant sex that caused it.
There was no sex, rampant or otherwise, that night because by the time we’d sent the last punter on his way and locked the door behind him we were knackered. When we got up to the flat all either of us was good for was sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea while we unwound. That’s the thing about finishing work at midnight, you can’t just go to bed and fall asleep, you need to take some time to unwind and, I’ve got to tell you, I was so wound up that night I wasn’t sure I’d get any sleep at all. I know that the pub had officially been mine – sorry ours – for a few weeks but that was the first night that my name, my name, had been over the door and my head was buzzing. I was so excited.
Even with the drinks that we had given away we would still make a profit, and I couldn’t help feeling that this was the start of something. I know it sounds corny, but you find yourself in the position I was in and tell me you wouldn’t have felt the same.
‘You’re quiet,’ Angie said after a while.
Was I? I hadn’t realised it but I guessed she was right because a lot of things were going through my head.
‘You all right?’
‘Never better,’ I said as I rested my arm across the back of the sofa as an invitation for her to come closer if she wanted to. ‘I was just thinking.’
She shuffled along, settled in beside me and asked, ‘What were you thinking about?’
‘This and that,’ I said vaguely, not wanting to tell her what had really been on my mind just before she asked the question.
The trouble is that in our years together Angie had learned how to read the signs and probably knew me better than I knew myself. She hit the nail on the head when she said, ‘You were thinking about home weren’t you? You were thinking about your family.’
I put the mug I’d been resting on my knee onto the table at the side of the sofa, freeing up my other arm so that I could wrap both of them around her. ‘This is home,’ I said.
‘You know what I mean, you were thinking about the home you had before this.’ Of course I’d known what she meant, I’d just hoped that if I made light of it she would let it go.
I should have known better. Once I’d accepted she wasn’t going to drop it, I thought we might as well have the conversation so I said, ‘Not the place really, more the people.’
She didn’t say anything, but her silence was just another way of her asking me to keep talking.
‘I was just wondering what they’d think, you know, Mum and Dad and our Tom. What would they think about me owning a pub? They’d never imagine it in a million years. My own garage one day if I’d won the lottery, but not a pub.’
‘I’d bet they’d be proud of you.’
The words were muffled into my chest but I’m sure that’s what she said.
Would they be? I thought about that one for a few seconds before I answered. ‘Maybe.’
Before I had a chance to give it any more thought Angie had bounced off the sofa and onto my knee. She straddled me so that she was facing me.
‘Maybe?’ she said. ‘Why “maybe”? Of course they’d be proud of you.’
‘I know. But they’d have been really hurt when I left, especially the way I left...’
‘But that was ages ago,’ she said. ‘Things change, people change.’ She held my head in her hands and her face was just inches from mine. ‘You’ve done something good with your life. Of course they’d be proud.’
‘I know, but...’ she cut me off before I could finish the sentence.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I know it wasn’t your finest hour but you did what you thought you had to do, what was best for you.’ She paused just long enough to draw breath. ‘You’re not the person you were back then, you’ve moved on. They’ll have moved on too.’
She paused longer this time and then hit me with a bombshell. ‘Maybe now is the time to get back in touch with them.’
The thought of it brought me out in a cold sweat but I told her I’d think about it. I was surprised when she left it at that but I knew she would bring it up again some time.
Long after Angie was asleep beside me, and even though I was completely exhausted, I lay awake thinking about what I’d once had. I’m not especially talking about Michelle. It was more my parents and my brother that filled my thoughts.
When I’d left Tom was a slightly drippy art student. No, that’s not fair. He wasn’t drippy, he just wasn’t like me. He preferred using his brain to his hands and, while I was mortal drunk most Saturday nights, I never saw him even tipsy. To look at, we were almost the same but in all other ways we were chalk and cheese.
I wondered what he was up to. He’d have been thirty by then and I imagined him settled down with a girl he’d met at college, a fellow art student maybe. They’d be living in some Bohemian heaven where she made bread and they ate lentils with everything. I couldn’t help smiling at that, though I knew I was being cruel. Tom was a good kid. I hoped he’d done well for himself.
When I thought ab
out my parents, even though I knew it was ridiculous, I saw them as they had been: I saw Mum, as she was that last morning when she told me she’d heard me moving around during the night and banged on about me not having breakfast. I couldn’t imagine her having changed much in the intervening years. She’d been almost fifty when I left so she must be nearly sixty by now. As for Dad, he’d already be sixty. He’d had a big birthday and I’d missed it. I wondered what else I’d missed.
I know that the thought should have occurred to me then but it didn’t and wouldn’t for a few more years. What if I had missed something more important than a big birthday? What if I’d missed something like a funeral? When I did think about it, I would decide that surely I would know if one of them had died, I would feel it – and I would quickly dismiss the thought.
Back when Angie suggested it I just decided that ‘now’ wasn’t the right time. I would get in touch again but only when the time was right. It would be a good few years before the time turned out to be right.
I surprised the hell out of Angie by telling her what I was going to do and she asked the obvious question.
‘Why now?’
I couldn’t answer her because I didn’t really know the reason. I just knew that the thought had come to me a few weeks earlier and wouldn’t go away. It kept coming back to me, especially in the dark hours of the early morning, and that morning I’d decided it was what I wanted to do. I tried explaining it to Angie, but I didn’t expect her to understand. How could she when even I didn’t?
She said that if it was what I thought, then I should do it; and I should do it before I changed my mind. ‘Trust your instinct Rob,’ she told me.
‘But it’s been over sixteen years,’ I said.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ Angie said, realising that I was already starting to talk myself out of it. ‘They’re your family.’
‘They might not want to see me,’ I said, feeling pathetic. That was my biggest fear.
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