The Missing Letters of Mrs Bright (ARC)

by Beth Miller

  * * *

  Fuck.

  Oh, Edward. I was too late.

  I was too stunned to cry. I’d told Bear I wasn’t going to behave as if there was unlimited time any longer, and here was the life lesson in not having done that come back to bite me. I’d had years to tell Edward the truth – decades – and I’d blown it. If I’d told him at any point during the last twenty-eight years, right up to last autumn, he would have had the chance…

  Hang on a minute, though. A tiny hope gripped me. Perhaps this was another David. I turned back to the laptop and scanned the obituary details. Sure, it was an unusual surname, and this man was the right age, but actually, this could really still be someone else. You know what? I was sure it was someone else. I just didn’t have that feeling that he had died. When Bear had left the palazzo I knew I was alone, but I didn’t have that same feeling about David having left the world. But I had to act quickly, before it really was too late. I texted Edward, suggesting I come up and see him and Georgia at the weekend. It was going to be the worst conversation of my life, but it would be even worse if David died and the choice for Edward to meet him was taken away.

  The phone rang: Imogen. I closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure how much more tension I could handle.

  ‘Kay, dear! Good news! My sons love your ideas, and would like to offer you the tenancy.’

  ‘Oh, that is so wonderful!’ I could hardly believe that Bryn Glas would be mine.

  ‘They’re even willing to accept a small rent reduction in return for your hard work. How does £700 a month sound?’

  ‘Marvellous, Imo.’ It sounded awful. But I knew I would be able to manage it, one way or another.

  After we hung up, I was about to text Rose and tell her the exciting news, when the computer beeped: a Facebook message. Oh, God. I did a quick bit of yoga breathing, then clicked it open.

  Hi Kay, I’m Ben, David’s eldest child. I’m monitoring his FB page for my mum. I’m sorry to tell you that Dad died last year. Mum is happy to make contact with any of Dad’s old friends. If you’d like to, please send me your contact details. Best, Ben.

  Well, I guess I could stop deluding myself that it was the obituary of some other David Endevane. You bloody idiot, Kay. Thinking I could feel that he was still in the world. What an arrogant idiot I was. What an utter, useless mess I had made of everything. I closed the computer, and rested my head on the table.

  Everything in my life that had gone wrong was because I’d let David push me away. When I told him I was pregnant, and he didn’t want to know, why wasn’t I more persistent? Why didn’t I wait it out? Why wasn’t I brave enough to have had the baby on my own? David would doubtless have come round eventually, if not to me, then to his son. If I’d done that, I wouldn’t have rushed into marrying Richard, wouldn’t have had to feel grateful for so long that he’d rescued me. I wouldn’t have been living behind glass all these years, never doing quite what I wanted, not achieving anything. And Edward would have known his biological father, or at least known who he was, had the choice to approach him or not. What a stupid mess I’d made of it all. I couldn’t even remember why I’d done what I did, couldn’t connect to the girl who made those fateful decisions all those years ago.

  I felt hollowed out, too bleak to cry. David, Bear, my mum. Everything was utter crap. Even the thought of Bryn Glas couldn’t work its usual magic.

  My phone pinged: Edward, saying I would be very welcome to come up this weekend. Oh, terrific. I thought about what I was going to have to tell him, and wondered exactly how I was going to be able to find the words.

  Letter written on 16 August 1988

  Dearest Bear,

  * * *

  Thank you, darling, for your lovely kind letter, but I am in a much better place now. Buy a hat, I’m getting married! No, not to HWNISNUA, but to Richard. How the hell did this happen, thinks Bear, all confused!

  I’m hardly sure myself. It was a few weeks ago, not long after HWNISNUA dumped me, and I bumped into Richard in the Students’ Union. It was the first time I’d seen him since we split, and he looked so handsome. Fickle old Kay, eh? He asked how I was, so nicely, that I plucked up the courage to tell him my news. We spent the evening together, and long story short, he proposed. He said he’d missed me terribly, that he loved me, and that, being a few years older than me, he felt ready to be a father. We made a solemn pact that we wouldn’t tell anyone the truth, ever, and that we would never speak of it again.

  I didn’t tell him you already knew. But I’m going to keep my promise to him, and not tell anyone else. Not even Rose. Not Mum. Not the baby. And certainly not Richard’s terrifying mother, who I’m pretty sure despises me for ‘trapping’ Richard. Imagine if she knew the truth!

  I’m not going to finish my degree. At first I thought I could take a year out, have the baby, then come back. But I went to see Dad’s friend, the one who liked my work and offered me an apprenticeship in his Soho studio. I told him about the baby, and asked if he could wait a year and he said the timing wouldn’t work, and that was that. It all feels a bit pointless now. It’s going to be marriage and a baby instead, and perhaps it was silly to think I could make it a career, there’s so many brilliant photographers out there. Richard has big plans after his MBA for a shop he wants to open, and when the baby is older I can work there.

  Richard isn’t as handsome as HWNISNUA, but he is something better than that: he’s kind. And he loves me. He’s generous, and hard-working, and I think he’ll be a great dad. And I do love him, Bear. I really do. I think what I felt with HWNISNUA was infatuation. It’s the real thing with Richard. I didn’t see it when we were dating before, but I do now.

  It’s going to be a quick and tiny wedding next week, register office. By the time you read this, it will already have happened, I will be Mrs Bright, so don’t really buy a hat, unless you want one anyway. Mum’s disappointed it won’t be in church but she knows we want to move quickly. Hope I don’t look too preg in the photos! I’m already showing a little. I know you won’t be here for it but I’ll be thinking of you. Thanks for all your brilliant support these last crazy few months. Love ya, Honey Bear.

  Till next time.

  Miss you.

  * * *

  Always, Kay

  Twenty-Two

  Kay

  My arms ached, but the boys still had boundless energy, hurtling from one piece of playground equipment to the other. I’d already done a very long grandmotherly stint at swing-pushing, way longer than I used to manage when Edward and Stella were little. It had seemed so boring, then. Push, wait, push, wait. You couldn’t switch off while doing it, in case you absent-mindedly shoved them too high, or got hit in the chest on the return trajectory. I must have been a rather impatient young mother.

  It was different this time round. There was pleasure in finding the exact right spot for my feet in between the two swings, so I didn’t have to keep moving forwards and back; a simple bend at the waist was enough. There was pleasure in the repetitive rhythm, too, and in arranging it so that as I pushed one, the other one was coming back. Once I got into the groove, I felt like some kind of Swing Queen. Above all, there was huge pleasure in the twins’ delighted screams, crying, ‘More!’ and ‘Who’s highest, Nana?’ I let myself properly experience each second with them, in case this was it, in case this was the last time I was allowed to see them.

  When at last they’d had enough, I took them for a brief turn round the greenhouse, though they were still too little for it, really. Then we went to the botanic gardens’ outdoor café where Edward was working on some papers. How grown-up he looked, sitting there beavering away in his shirt and jacket, a coffee in front of him. It was so easy to see underneath his façade of a father of nearly thirty to the little boy he’d been: sitting at the kitchen table in his school uniform, studiously doing his homework, frowning in concentration, pushing the hair out of his eyes.

  I bought the boys each an ice-cream square sandwiched by chewy wafers. �
�Double nuggets!’ Finlay cried in disbelief, suggesting they weren’t usually allowed such a treat. I then sat them down on the grass to watch an inept juggler, and took my coffee over to Edward.

  ‘Nice stamina, Mum,’ Edward said, putting down his pen. ‘That was great, thank you, it gave me a chance to finish reading a couple of reports.’

  ‘Shame you have to do work on a Sunday.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll save me time tomorrow at the meeting.’ He glanced over at the boys. ‘Double nuggets. What kind of crazy fool are you?’

  ‘Messy, aren’t they? Hope Georgia doesn’t mind.’ I glanced at the papers he was looking at, but they could have been written in Chinese for all the sense they made to me. I often felt like an out-of-touch granny when I was with Edward. At least I wasn’t quite at the shawl stage yet.

  * * *

  I still hadn’t worked out what to say to Edward. He and Georgia had been particularly sweet since I arrived last night, fussing over me, asking how I was. Edward didn’t quite say, ‘Now you’ve gone insane and left Dad, how’s it going?’ but the gentle, kid-glove treatment I was getting suggested it was what he was thinking.

  ‘So how were your travels, Mum?’ he said now, though I knew he wasn’t super-interested. Probably he thought of them as one of the symptoms of my madness.

  ‘You want to see some photos?’ I took my phone out.

  ‘Sure. You sent me a couple from Venice, but I’d like to see more.’ He flicked through them, making polite comments. ‘Some of these are pretty good. This one, the little canals, gorgeous. You should send these somewhere. The Herald run this photo competition every week.’

  ‘The newspaper? Ah no, they’re just on my phone.’ I put on my sunglasses. The Glasgow sunshine was stronger than I’d come to expect from my previous, usually rainy, visits here.

  ‘I’ll AirDrop a couple to myself,’ he said, fiddling about with our phones. ‘Maybe I’ll send some in for you.’ He then sat back, and said, with the air of someone who’s finally plucked up the courage to say what’s on their mind, ‘Go on, then, Mum.’

  ‘Go on, what?’ My heart stuttered – did he somehow know what I wanted to tell him?

  ‘Haven’t you come up here to have a go at me?’

  I hadn’t expected this conversational turn. Surely it should be the other way round. ‘What have you done,’ I said, ‘that I should be telling you off about?’ I was happy to stall the inevitable moment when he realised that he was the one who should be telling me off.

  ‘Because I haven’t been to see Dad,’ he muttered. ‘Since you, er, left. Or Stella.’

  Ah! ‘I know, darling, and I’m sure they’d love to see you.’

  ‘Well, go on, then,’ he said, avoiding my eye. ‘Tell me what a prick I am. Abandoning them in their hour of need, blah blah.’

  ‘Certainly not. That’s not why I’m here, Edward.’

  ‘It’s not?’

  ‘No. I wanted to see you. And actually, I’m here to say that I’m sorry, sweetheart.’ It felt good to say it. Great, in fact. I should say it more.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For leaving Dad. For making a big mess for everyone to clear up. And…’ I took a breath. ‘For not always being honest with you.’

  ‘Oh.’ He stared at the table. ‘Well, I guess I… I don’t know… Georgia thinks I should tell… I want to. God, how to start?’

  He was clearly bursting to say something, so keen in fact that he didn’t seem to notice my ‘not always been honest’ confession. Fine. Let’s keep stalling forever, sitting in these pretty gardens, my grandchildren nearby, the sun on my back, coffee in my hand. Because once I told him, who knew what he’d say? If he didn’t want to see me ever again, I knew how to get to the train station from here. I had all my essentials on me, and Georgia would probably be willing to send on the rest of my things that were back at their house. I had to tell him, it had to be today, and I had to face whatever consequences there were, however bad. But I was happy to postpone the moment for as long as possible.

  ‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Say what you need to say.’

  He shook his head. For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to say anything. Then he said in a rush, ‘Aren’t you pissed off with Dad?’

  ‘With Dad?’ Fleetingly, I wondered if Edward had got the wrong end of the stick, if he thought it was Rich who’d left me. ‘Why?’

  ‘About how quickly he replaced you?’

  Ah, again! ‘You’ve heard about his new woman, have you?’

  ‘Stella texted me. He’s going to Paris, the bastard.’

  Yes, indeed. A week with Rich in Paris, or anywhere, really – how we had all dreamed of that for so many years.

  ‘Well, look,’ I said, my voice low, in case of eavesdroppers, ‘it does seem very quick to me – unflatteringly quick! – but I guess it’s what your dad needs to get him through our split. If so, I’m all for it. I hope the person he’s found is nice, someone who will take care of him. And look, it’s someone who can persuade him out of his rut, who can get him to go on holiday! I never could. I genuinely hope it works out for him.’

  ‘Wow.’ Edward looked at me intensely. ‘You really did want to fucking leave him, didn’t you?’

  ‘It was the right thing for me. I’m hoping it will turn out to be right for all of us.’ I smiled, though I didn’t feel like it, and started to gather my courage. Be brave, I thought. Remember, you’ve climbed Snowdon. You are tough, a mighty woman. Oh, hell. ‘Edward, I’m here because I really wanted to see you and the twins, and Georgia too, of course. But it’s also because there’s something I have to tell you.’

  ‘About Dad?’

  ‘Not really, it’s about you.’ I stirred my coffee unnecessarily, to buy time. ‘It’s something I wish I’d told you years ago. The reasons why I didn’t are complicated, your father and I thought, well, it was a long time ago, but we thought…’ God! This was even harder than I’d imagined.

  ‘Spit it out, Mum,’ Edward said. He looked almost amused.

  ‘Spit it out. Good idea.’ My heart pounding, feeling sick, I said all in a rush, ‘Dad isn’t your real father. Your real father was a man called David who I met at university. We hadn’t been together long when I got pregnant and he didn’t want it – you. To cut a long story short, your father offered to raise you as his own and we agreed we would keep it secret and that seemed terribly important at the time but it doesn’t anymore, and—’

  ‘Mum.’ Edward was holding up his hand. ‘I—’

  ‘Please, there’s a tiny bit more. The worst bit. Let me get it out then you can speak for as long as you want.’ I braced both hands on the table, for moral support, or something. ‘I recently decided to tell you and I tracked David down but he… he…’ I didn’t know how to say it. Now it came to it, I didn’t have the words. ‘He… oh, God…’

  ‘He died last year,’ Edward said.

  I stared at him. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Mum. I know about David.’

  The sunlight in the gardens seemed whiter all at once, brighter. I thought I might faint. I gripped harder onto the edge of the table, closing my eyes to stop the dizziness. He knew. He already knew! But how? Only four of us knew: me, David, Richard and Bear. Three, of course, now that David…

  I opened my eyes. ‘Did Dad tell you?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘I can’t believe that!’ How could Richard have broken our pact, and then not told me he’d broken it? That bastard. Why had he? Edward was looking at me, waiting for me to go on.

  ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you years ago,’ I said. I took a deep breath. ‘I’d pushed it so thoroughly under the carpet that I pretty much forgot about it. But I wish I’d given you the chance to see him.’

  The twins came running over, covered in ice cream. ‘Nana! Daddy! We’re bored!’

  ‘Come on then,’ Edward said, taking a packet of wet wipes out of his inside pocket and expertly mopping their faces, ‘let’s go home.’ He turned to m
e, and said, ‘To be continued.’

  Somehow I got to my feet and walked back to the car with them, a sticky little hand in each of mine.

  By the time we got back to their place, a lovely airy high-ceilinged house in Shawlands, I felt completely weird. Having to sing fifteen verses of ‘Old MacDonald’ in the car to distract Jamie from feeling sick probably hadn’t helped. Who knew that Old MacDonald had iPads and laser guns on his farm, eh? It certainly was a more modern enterprise than the one I sang about when their dad was little.

  Georgia was out at her mum’s, so I didn’t have to put on a front for her. Edward sat the kids in front of CBeebies, and he and I went into the kitchen. I stood there, rather lost in the large room.

  ‘I’ll get their tea together,’ he said.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘It’s only fish fingers. Why don’t you make us some tea? You look a bit shell-shocked.’

  My strange, unknowable child. He’d always been so much more enigmatic than Stella. She might not be great at naming her feelings, but she always showed them. You knew straight away if she was happy or upset. Edward was self-contained, had been since he was little. You had to prise under the surface to glimpse what he was thinking.

  I filled the kettle, and sat down. ‘Go on, then, love,’ I said, trying not to sound like I was begging, even if I was. ‘Tell me.’

  Edward put fish fingers under the grill, and started chopping carrots into neat little sticks. ‘Do you remember when the twins were tiny, a couple of years ago, and they got bronchitis?’

  I’d flown up to Glasgow to help out; Edward and Georgia were both exhausted. I’d have stayed longer, but Richard had phoned several times, making pointed comments about the shop. Remembering that now made me ashamed I’d let him talk me into returning home before I wanted; ashamed that I’d bought into the obvious nonsense of treating work as more important than my family.