by Jen Silver
Josh shrugged off his jacket. “I’ll just get a beer, and then you can introduce us properly, Mum.”
They sat in awkward silence until Josh returned. Jay seemed to find something interesting in the bottom of her wine glass. Tess’s gaze roamed around the room. Shelves full of books lined one wall. She would have liked a closer look to see the reading material the two inhabitants favoured.
Josh came back with a bottle in hand and perched on the other end of the sofa. Ritchie had been following him closely and sat by his feet, contented when Josh scratched behind his ears.
“Well, this is a well-kept secret. Where have you been hiding?” His blue gaze met hers.
Jay answered before Tess could open her mouth. “Charley gave her up for adoption.”
Josh picked up the foremost photo on the table. “Is Dougie her father as well?”
“No, it was my brother.” Jay poured herself another glass of wine.
“Uncle Stewie. Wow.”
†
Jay hadn’t wanted this to happen, not at this moment in time anyway. Tess’s quick remark only reinforced what she’d realised on first meeting the girl. She had Charley’s ability to make connections where no one else expected them. Seeing them seated together was unreal. A double vision of Charley.
“Look, Tess. I’m sure you have many more questions, but I’m not really up to answering them tonight. Can we leave it there for now?”
“Yeah. Okay.” Tess picked up her bag and coat.
“I’ll see you out.” Josh leapt to his feet.
When Josh returned a few minutes later, he gave Jay a quick kiss on the cheek. “The night’s still young. I’m off to the The Churchill. Do you want to come?”
“No, thanks. I am really quite bushed.”
“Right, see you in a bit. No, Ritchie. Stay.”
Jay heard the door slam as he left. No surprise, really. She was sure he was going to meet up with Tess at the pub. Nothing she could do to stop it. The time had come, as she knew it would one day. The time to stop hiding.
She drank the last of the wine and sat back in the recliner, pulling the lever to raise the footrest. The effects of the drink mixed with the strain of the last hour, and she was almost asleep when the doorbell rang.
†
Amanda couldn’t bear the sight of the drooping roses any longer. She pitched them headfirst into the bin and took the vase to the sink in the kitchen next to the office. Jay hadn’t come back to her place the previous night, claiming to be tired and having paperwork to finish. It sounded like a feeble excuse. As far as she knew, Mo Farrell looked after Jay’s business accounts. Amanda desperately wanted to talk to Jay about Charlotte Summersbridge.
During one of her coffee breaks during the day, she’d trawled the Internet for information and found several articles. One of them had a clear head-and-shoulders photo. Attractive possibly, if you liked the red-haired, blue-eyed combination. Only a few days short of her thirtieth birthday when the boat went down; the articles gave nothing away about Charlotte’s private life, mainly quoting from her work on the dying seal population.
Jay still hadn’t phoned or texted by the time Amanda got home. She discarded her work clothes and stood inside her walk-in closet pondering what to wear. On nights without her lover’s distracting presence, she would lounge in front of the telly with a takeaway, comfortable in her well-worn tracksuit.
Was Jay at home? A lot of the excuses for not seeing Amanda revolved around Josh. He was twenty-four. Surely he didn’t want his mother hanging around all the time.
She’d only been to the mews house once before. And that was only because Josh was away somewhere. This was ridiculous. She was Jay’s fiancée. She should be able to see her anytime she wanted.
Mind made up, Amanda selected a blouse she knew Jay liked and a tight-fitting short skirt. The choice of underwear was easy. She had a drawer full of skimpy items, continually replenished as Jay more often than not ripped them off her body in her haste to make love to her. She often played rough and Amanda enjoyed it, revelling in the fiery passion Jay ignited.
Although she had been to the house before, the location was a hazy memory, as Jay was holding her hand and she was anticipating how they would spend the next few hours. Amanda walked up and down a few streets in the general vicinity before she saw the archway leading to the mews. The cobbled stones underfoot made walking in high heels a hazardous affair. Something else she’d forgotten from the previous visit.
Lights were on in the upstairs window that she thought was the kitchen. If she remembered rightly, the living room faced the enclosed garden at the back, floor-to-ceiling windows letting in more light than she’d expected in the compact dwelling. Jay had proudly informed her that Josh’s architectural enhancements were responsible for the modern look of the inside of the house.
Josh again. He was obviously the main rival for Jay’s affections. Why couldn’t he have got a job in another city? Amanda took a deep breath, steeling herself to walk across and ring the doorbell.
She hadn’t taken a step when the door opened. A young woman came out, smiling as she adjusted her shoulder bag. In the light from the one ancient streetlamp lighting the mews, Amanda could see her face clearly. She didn’t realise she was holding her breath until the woman had passed through the archway on to the main road. The likeness was unmistakable. Charlotte Summersbridge as she had looked in the old newspaper photograph.
The door opened again and Josh came out. He didn’t look around, just huddled into his thin jacket and walked quickly through the arch. Just Jay and the dog in the house now. Part of her mind told her to go back to her flat and numb her thoughts with a bottle of tequila for company. The other part told her to go in and get some answers. Jay had a lot of explaining to do.
Chapter Six
Tess found the pub easily from Josh’s whispered directions when he’d escorted her downstairs to the door. It wasn’t too busy. The commuter crowd would all have gone by now, having whiled away an hour or two after work to miss the worst of the evening crush on the tube.
She ordered a lime and soda for herself and a pint of beer for Josh. After the two glasses of wine Jay had given her, she wanted to keep a clear head for this conversation.
Josh arrived at the same time as the bartender finished pulling the pint. “I’ll get these.” He took a tenner out of his pocket and handed it over before she could protest. “There’s a free table near the fireplace. Have a seat and I’ll bring the drinks over.”
Tess complied, thinking he’d certainly mastered the art of chivalry, placing her bag between her feet as she sat. For a moment, she thought about getting her phone out to record their chat. But she reminded herself that this was a personal quest, not a journalistic one.
“So, what did Mum tell you about Charley?” he asked as soon as he sat opposite.
“You call Jay Mum, even though she isn’t your mother.”
“I was still a baby when Charley died. Jay’s the only mother I’ve known.”
“And Douglas Rennie’s your father?”
“Yeah. But I call him Dougie. He’s not really done the dad thing. I mean, he and Jay are friends but not partners.”
“I get that. I know she’s a lesbian. Does she have a current girlfriend?”
Josh put his glass back down on the table and swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand in a self-conscious gesture. “Yes, but I’m not going to gossip about my mum.”
“Okay.” Tess took a sip of her own drink before asking, “So when did you transition?”
“Wow. We’ve only just met. How did you know?”
“Just a sort of look. A girl in my Year 11 class went through it. But that was like fifteen years ago. She found it really hard to be accepted. At the end of the year she—sorry, he—went to a different school to do sixth form. How was it for you?”
“Fifteen years ago I was nine. Up to that time I was fairly happy being a tomboy. Jay never tried to make me wear dresses or do nor
mal girl-type things. But, you know, it was always there from an early age. I just knew I was meant to be a boy. I would dream that one day I would wake up as a boy.”
“When did you…I’m not sure how to word this…you know, figure out it wasn’t going to happen magically overnight?”
“About the time I stopped believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.” Josh studied her over the rim of his glass. “Anyway, where have you been hiding all these years? How come I didn’t know anything about you until tonight?”
“I didn’t know until recently that neither of my mothers, the two women who brought me up, were actually my birth mother. None of their eggs were involved. I only vaguely remembered a woman I called Auntie Char who occasionally turned up with a belated birthday or Christmas present. And then she disappeared from our lives.”
“You have more memories of her than I do. Jay’s kept all her things that she left in the cottage. In the attic.”
“What kind of things?”
“Clothes, books, research notes, and lots of photos. Jay even kept all her music albums even though we don’t have a record player. I sometimes sit up there looking at the pictures of Jay and Charley, Uncle Stewie and Dougie. They look so happy. I can’t help thinking about what it would have been like if Stewie and Charley were still alive. How different would our lives have been? Jay does her best to hide it from me, but I know she thinks about them all the time.”
Tess sipped her drink and wondered how she could get access to the attic. Her journalistic senses were kicking in. Befriending Josh was a step in that direction. He seemed keen to embrace her as his long-lost sister. Although she’d told Jay she didn’t want to drive out to the Norfolk coast again, it would be worth it to get a peek at the remnants of Char’s life.
†
Amanda pressed the doorbell and waited. Unlike in her apartment building, the small house had no entry phone. Of course, really Jay should have given her a key. Just another example of how little she let Amanda into her life. She heard the dog barking. What was its name? She didn’t really like dogs. When they were married, the dog would have to live with Josh.
Jay opened the door looking flushed. It couldn’t have been from running down the stairs. “Oh, hi. What are you doing here?”
Not exactly the enthusiastic greeting she hoped for from her fiancée. “We need to talk. That girl who just left looked remarkably like Charlotte Summersbridge. Don’t you think it’s time you told me about her?”
“Come in.” Jay walked away from the door.
The dog looked up at her briefly, then turned and followed Jay. Amanda closed the door and joined the procession.
Evidence of Jay’s previous visitor cluttered the coffee table in the living room. Two wine glasses, and a beer bottle hardly touched. The wine glasses were empty and so was the bottle of what looked like an expensive Malbec. That could explain the flush on Jay’s cheeks.
“Do you want a drink?”
“I wouldn’t mind a glass of white if you’ve got any chilled.”
Jay disappeared around the corner to the kitchen area. Amanda sat on the sofa, and the dog jumped up beside her. She tried to fend off his advances as he moved onto her lap and attempted to lick her face.
“Ritchie, get down.”
The dog obeyed and sat on the floor. Jay placed a glass of white wine in front of Amanda. In her other hand she held a glass of water.
“Sorry about that.” She sat in the chair opposite and called the dog over, inviting him to sit on her lap. He settled down after she’d petted him and let him lick her face.
She’ll need to wash that off before she gets another kiss from me. Amanda sipped her wine. It was well chilled.
“What do you want to know? It seems all I’ve done this evening is talk about Charley.”
Charley, was it? Lynne was right. There was a personal connection, a very personal one.
“Well, she obviously means a lot to you. I mean, I know she’s dead and has been for a long time. But you named your clinic after her.”
“Yes, she was my lover. More than that. My soul mate. She gave birth to Josh and we were going to bring him up together. The start of our family.”
Each word from Jay’s mouth was a stab in the heart. “Lover” she had expected. But not “soul mate”, “family”.
“What about the other one?”
Jay sipped her water, absentmindedly stroking the dog’s ears. Amanda felt a twinge of jealousy. Wouldn’t she love that hand stroking her? It would need washing first, though.
“Oh. You mean Tess. Charley had her while she was at uni and gave her up for adoption to a lesbian couple who wanted a child but neither of the women was able to carry one.”
“Has this Tess always been part of your life?”
“No. We only met the weekend before last. She’s a journalist and obtained an interview through Mo saying she wanted to write a book about my tennis career. But then she discovered that Charley was her birth mother, and since then she has been on a mission to find out more about her.”
“How long were you with…Charley?”
“Seven years as lovers, but we knew each other a few years before.”
“How did you meet?”
“My parents wanted me to go to university. I wasn’t keen. All I really wanted to do was play tennis. Anyway, I got an interview at Exeter University. Charley was a second-year student there and was assigned to show me around.”
“You were going to study marine biology?”
“No, of course not. The physical-education degree came under the same department, though. It’s called something different now. Health science or something like that. I didn’t get past the first two terms. As I’ve told you before, my parents were killed in a car crash. Stewart initially thought I should carry on and get the degree as they’d wished. But my thinking was that if their lives could end so suddenly, so could mine. I knew sitting in a classroom wasn’t the way I wanted to spend the next few years. He didn’t take much persuading to let me follow my dream of becoming a tennis pro.”
“Did your relationship with Charley start while you were at uni?”
“I don’t know why this is important to you. It was a long time ago.”
“It’s obviously still important to you. That’s why I want to know. We’re going to be married in just over a week. We shouldn’t have any secrets.”
Jay looked drained and Amanda knew she was pushing it. But she wanted answers.
†
Jay closed her eyes. She wished Amanda would stop asking questions. That first time with Charley wasn’t something she could share with her. A summer tournament and her first win as a professional. Not the whole tournament, but the match that got her into the semi-final. She hadn’t even known that Charley was there while she was playing. Probably a good thing, she’d thought afterwards. Her concentration would have been shot.
The attraction had been there from the day they met. While Charley took her round the university campus, Jay had barely been able to concentrate. She couldn’t imagine that this gorgeous woman would be remotely interested in her. Their first date happened more or less by accident at the end of Michaelmas term just before the start of Christmas break. Not really a date. They had both been at the same end-of-term dance organised by the student union. Jay only decided to go at the last minute.
Charley was popular with the boys. Never without a dance partner, but she didn’t seem to have a boyfriend claiming her attention. During a break in the music, Jay finally plucked up the courage to talk to her. She didn’t dance with her then but agreed to meet her for coffee the next day.
All through the spring term, they danced around each other. Jay loved spending time with Charley, but it was getting harder to be with her and not be any closer than the friendship Charley offered. The day that changed was a day of firsts and the start of the rollercoaster ride that ended so abruptly seven years later.
Jay opened the bedroom door and stepped inside, dropping
her tennis kit by the closet. Stewart hadn’t been able to get time off to come to the tournament, but he’d booked her in to the best hotel in the town.
Charley gasped as she moved past Jay to take in the four-poster double bed, the seating area in front of the window, and door leading on to a balcony.
“I know you won today. But you still can’t afford this.”
“No. Stewie can, though. And he’s stumped up for this as well.” Jay read the card on the tray holding the ice bucked with a full-size bottle of champagne nestled inside. “‘To the next British number one. You were ace today, Baby Bird.’”
“Hm, Baby Bird, is it?” Charley’s eyes twinkled mischievously.
“Don’t you start. He only gets away with it because he’s bigger than me.”
Charley stood on tiptoe so their noses touched. “Think you can handle me, Baby Bird?”
Jay grabbed her shoulders and kissed her mouth, relishing the soft feel of the lips she’d wanted to savour from the first moment she’d seen Charley on campus. After a few heavenly moments, she broke the connection and pulled back to study the face inches from her own.
“Are you sure about this?” Jay’s gaze locked on to the mesmerising blue eyes.
“Never been surer.”
“Champagne now?”
“Maybe later.”
Jay couldn’t recall afterwards which one of them made the first move. She had thought she would be able to play it cool, not wanting to let her inexperience show. Charley had never mentioned having any previous lovers. All these months she’d deflected any conversation veering on to the topic. But it was Charley who took charge.
“You were so beautiful out there on court. I can’t believe everyone watching wasn’t as turned on as I was.”
“You’re making me blush.” Lying naked next to the woman she’d dreamt of for months, Jay was already consumed by heat.
“Impossible.” Charley moved slowly, sensually down Jay’s body, caressing her gently with her hands and her lips until she reached her goal. Jay’s arousal had already reached a peak by the time Charley’s mouth settled on the wet opening awaiting her attention. Jay lost control of her hips, arching as each stroke of Charley’s tongue increased the intensity of the orgasm building inside.