Messy, Wonderful Us

by Catherine Isaac

  This evening, though, Ruth has an alternative engagement.

  ‘She’s gone to see a plastic surgeon after work,’ I tell Ed through laboured breaths as we jog along the iron bridge that spans the Fairy Glen. ‘She wants to spend some of the money from the divorce on breast surgery. It’s all turned nasty with Andy apparently.’

  ‘Not the “conscious uncoupling” she was hoping for then?’ Ed asks.

  ‘No, that hasn’t quite worked out. Still, I can’t tell you how glad I am that she seems to be moving on.’

  He suppresses a knowing smile; Ed is well aware that I’m no use to anyone during a romantic crisis. It’s not that I’m unsympathetic. I do listen and make all the right noises. But I can’t stand seeing people upset and weeping into their Earl Grey. I just wish we could skip to the bit where we start talking about movies, politics or neuronal signalling again.

  We reach the section of the road next to the boating lake and Ed begins to head up the gentle slope away from the water. Which reminds me of the other thing I love about running – going home. Only, I’ve now been puffing and panting for thirty-five minutes and this is showing no signs of drawing to a conclusion.

  ‘Do you want me to slow down?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I insist, then: ‘Oh, go on then.’

  We head back to the car while discussing the usual incidentals of our lives – what we’re both doing at the weekend, how our families are, what we’re reading. Ed and I have similar taste in books, so I know if he recommends something that I’ll love it, with the exception of The Dice Man or poetry, neither of which I can abide.

  ‘I started The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood a couple of days ago,’ I tell him.

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘It is. Though I’m struggling to concentrate at the moment.’

  A little boy on a bike comes hurtling towards us and we dodge out of the way at the last minute. ‘This business about the letter you found at your grandma’s has really got to you, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it you?’

  ‘I guess it would.’

  My legs suddenly grind to a halt and I bend over breathlessly. He turns and walks back to me as I straighten up.

  ‘They could’ve just been friends, Allie.’

  ‘They’re holding hands. She looks besotted with him. And what about that letter? And the fact that he looks like me. He’s even got my gap . . .’

  ‘Hmm.’ We break into a jog again, gentler this time.

  ‘What shall I do?’ I ask him.

  ‘I don’t know.’ This silences me momentarily because Ed always knows what to do. When I dropped my school bus pass down a gutter at the age of fourteen, he knew what to do. When I was selling my first apartment and a survey revealed a bloom of hitherto-concealed rising damp, he knew what to do. I’ve always felt that, if we were stuck in a hot-air balloon with ten other people, he would know what to do.

  ‘I can see that this throws open a lot of questions, I’ll give you that much,’ he continues. ‘But there could be an explanation.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Twice in one conversation. My heart clenches.

  As he clicks open his car, my mind turns again to the picture. How carefree and happy and young my mum looks. I can’t begin to imagine what must have been going through her head only a few weeks after it was taken, when she realised the catastrophic mess she’d got herself into.

  Chapter 8

  The changes in her body had been barely perceptible at first. A pimple or two at the top of her back, a film of grease that slicked her skin like it hadn’t done since puberty. Her joints seemed to soften and ache and she felt as though she was coming down with something, a sickness that never materialised.

  And she was tired like never before, a fatigue so crushing that sometimes it felt like an enormous physical effort just to raise her eyelids to the rims of her skull. She prayed for it to pass, but as the sun rose each morning, nothing and everything changed. A dull pain throbbed in her breasts and belly, the same as she’d fleetingly known at the time of the month. Now, they were accompanied by a spidering of veins that led to her nipples, blue and pumped with blood.

  And that time of the month still hadn’t come.

  It’d been weeks and there was still no sign, while her anxiety grew, filling the corners of her bedroom like black smoke. Her circumstances were impossible. How was she going to tell anyone this without ruining absolutely everything? So she continued to clutch to the hope that there would be nothing to tell and that she’d wake one morning to find a dark pool on the pad she’d been wearing at night, in the hope that just putting it there might encourage her body to respond how it should.

  She occasionally found herself drifting past the surgery at the bottom of their road, glancing at the door as if there might be a solution inside. But it was small and Dr Jennings had been the family doctor since she’d been a little girl. He’d given her injections and treated her for whooping cough and her mother still gave him a jar of home-made chutney every Christmas.

  She thought about going in, but was plagued with the idea that one day her mum would be in there and Dr Jennings would let something slip. And all she’d be able to think about was how her daughter was going straight to hell. How all those prayers she’d uttered in church had been for nothing because her daughter had let her and everyone else down.

  The thought made her cheeks tingle and her chest pound. She didn’t have it within her sphere of comprehension to picture a resolution to all this. And the knowledge that she was loved was not a consolation.

  Quite the opposite. The girl everyone loved was only one version of her, the version they assumed she was. Someone loyal and honest and fundamentally good. Nobody wants to lay bare another side of themselves, one driven by lust and a capacity to put her own temporary, selfish desire ahead of everything else.

  Yet, she was going to have to tell someone soon. Her shape was subtly changing and it was only a matter of time before her clothes started to stretch beyond their capacity. She knew all this, but panic froze her into inaction and she continued to say nothing on the grounds that she didn’t have the words to explain any of it. She didn’t understand it herself.

  Chapter 9

  Two full months after my conversation in the park with Ed, I wake up to a plumbing emergency in the form of a nasty-looking liquid slowly emerging from the radiator in my bedroom. It’s left a stain the shade of Marmite on the carpet and when I phone Dad for his advice, he insists on racing over.

  ‘No, don’t! I can call a plumber,’ I reply, cursing myself for not doing that in the first place.

  ‘Let’s just see if I can fix it first,’ he says cheerfully.

  ‘But aren’t you at work today?’

  ‘I’ll pop in on my way. It’s really no problem.’

  I should’ve known he’d do this. My dad loves DIY and will turn his hand to anything after a glimpse in his Collins manual. Fifteen minutes after our phone call, he is on my doorstep, toolkit in his hand, smile on his face. ‘Shouldn’t take long,’ he says, before striding to the bedroom, removing his jacket and kneeling down next to the radiator.

  I hover above him as he examines the chrome plug on its side and glance at my watch. I’m not proud that I’m in my thirties and still haven’t accumulated enough home improvement expertise to resolve this matter myself. In that sense, I’m glad he’s here. The problem is that I urgently need to be somewhere else.

  ‘Why aren’t you at the university today?’ he asks, tilting his head as he takes a spanner to the valve.

  ‘I’ve got a day off.’

  He looks up, surprised. ‘Really? Mid-week?’

  ‘Yes! I’ll be doing some lecture planning from home later on but . . . Dad, this is awkward, but I’ve got a hair appointment. Then I was due to have lunch with Ruth.’

  ‘Your old friend from school? It’s fine, Allie – you go. I’ll let myself out when it’s done. Just ge
t me a bowl first so I can drain out some water.’

  I grab a cereal dish from the kitchen and hand it to him, pricking with guilt. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’

  ‘No, go on, run!’

  Half an hour later, I arrive at St Michael’s Business Centre, a former church converted into offices in a fairly down-at-heel part of town. I am buzzed in and greeted by a receptionist who also looks after clients in hired rooms throughout the building. The others include a cognitive behavioural therapist and a financial advisor. I suddenly wish I were here to discuss my pension provision. I flick through my Facebook feed while I’m waiting, when it occurs to me that I haven’t heard from Ed for a while. I sent him a text last week, but he hasn’t responded. I pause briefly to message him.

  All okay with you? The silence is unnerving!

  ‘Allie?’ Ged McKenzie is wearing a checked blue and white shirt with a polyester tie, layered with a navy V-neck jumper and grey slacks. He is very tall and looks about seventy, but is slim and sprightly for his age. ‘Come on up. We’ve made some progress.’

  Until recently, I had no real grasp of the kind of person who hires a private detective. The fact that it turned out to be me is something I can’t fully anchor to real life. It still feels like the sort of thing that belongs in an American crime thriller or pulp novel.

  I didn’t know where to start looking at first and simply began with an internet search. Despite the glossy websites, there was something vaguely sleazy about some of them, not helped by one of the most prevalent services on offer being ‘honey trapping’, along with a pick ’n’ mix of phone tapping, debugging and investigations into employees who are off sick.

  This all leads to the impression that there’s an unsuspecting victim somewhere down the line, albeit one who could well be spending Friday nights with his floozy and not at a conference like he told his wife. Does the fact that I’m looking for Stefano McCourt make him a victim? Does my doing this behind my father’s back make him one?

  As I follow Ged up a set of metal stairs, every step produces an echoing clank, as if we’re inside a shipping container. We reach the second floor and he invites me into his small office, which smells of freshly laid carpet tiles and the tang of marker pens. On one wall there is a small picture of him shaking hands with the Home Secretary when he retired from Greater Manchester Police. I’ve been here once before, but this is the first time I’ve noticed the photos on his desk – one of a St Bernard and another of three little girls, his granddaughters I presume.

  ‘Very cute,’ I say.

  ‘He is, isn’t he? Though old Tyson is getting on a bit these days.’

  ‘I meant the girls.’

  He smiles. ‘I know. Just joking. Can I get you a coffee before we start? Or a Hawthorn tea? I’ve got tons of the stuff. My wife saw something on This Morning saying it’ll improve my blood pressure but I can’t stand it. I’ve got a secret stash of Nescafé.’

  ‘I’ll pass, but thank you.’ I’m paying by the hour and I’d rather he wasn’t boiling a kettle while the clock is ticking.

  I told Ged everything I knew last time I was here. He took a copy of the newspaper cutting and my birth certificate, while I filled him in on what I’d found from the internet, Facebook and LinkedIn. This amounted to almost nothing, though I did find a Stefan McCourt serving six months at her majesty’s pleasure for fraudulently claiming £35,000 in invalidity benefits. A break-dancing routine posted on YouTube put an end to this particular source of income. Regardless of that, he was too young to be the man in my picture.

  Ged sinks into the seat opposite, leans across the desk and clasps his fingers together. ‘So, I have some news.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I need to warn you that I don’t have all the answers you’re looking for, but I do have some background information and a solid start. Obviously, I’m aware of your financial circumstances and that you want to cap your spend.’

  ‘It’s a question of necessity, I’m afraid.’ I earn enough to live in a nice apartment, drive a three-year-old Peugeot and go on holiday twice a year, but there’s certainly not enough spare to authorise an unlimited bill for this.

  ‘Well, I’ll talk to you about the money after I’ve told you what I know. But, don’t worry, I’m not here to try and twist your arm to spend more. That’s not what I’m about and I’m jam packed with cases anyway.’

  I swallow the tension in my throat and nod. ‘Okay. Tell me what you’ve found.’

  Chapter 10

  ‘I started with the electoral roll in 1983 and, while there is no mention of either Vittoria or Stefano, there is one Michael McCourt registered – Stefano’s father.’

  He opens his brown folder and takes out a thin stack of A4 pages. ‘The family’s address while they were in the UK was 47 Bamford Avenue in Aigburth. It’s now owned by a private landlord and rented out to some young professionals.’

  ‘My mother grew up in Mossley Hill, where my grandparents still live. It’s not far from there.’ I shift forward in my seat.

  ‘I could find a birth certificate for Michael but not Stefano, nor his mother Vittoria, whom we can presume was born in Italy. The time they spent here as a family seems to have been relatively brief – about a year as far as I can tell, when Stefano would have been nineteen. As the letter you found indicated, Michael McCourt had been a curator at the Castelvecchio museum, until 1983, when I discovered his name in some of the acquisitions catalogues from Liverpool Museum. It appears that the two institutions had a partnership that allowed him to transfer there.’

  He takes out another piece of paper. ‘As well as looking at the documentation, I also made contact with the chairman of Allerton People’s Hall to see if he remembered anything about Stefano. It felt like a long shot, but my phone call turned out to be remarkably fruitful.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Both Stefano and his father made a mark on the club’s cricket team in the short time they were in the UK. Michael had been a keen batsman and passed on his skills to Stefano, who won a Player of the Year award. The chairman vaguely remembered that he’d worked as a porter at the Royal Hospital, but spent a lot of weekends at the club in the summer of 1983. I asked him if he’d left suddenly or if he had any idea why but he just couldn’t recall, it was too long ago.’

  ‘So he had no idea where they ended up back in Italy?’

  ‘He didn’t,’ he replies. ‘However, one of my counterparts in Italy has found you an address.’

  I lean forward.

  ‘I subcontracted the work to a PI based in Rome called Virginia Boldrini. She has discovered an address on the Italian equivalent of the Land Registry – until four years ago the property was owned jointly by Michael and Vittoria McCourt, when ownership was then passed to their son.’

  He pushes a piece of paper with a typed address towards me. ‘It’s in Sirmione, in Lombardy, Northern Italy.’

  I stare at the paper, not touching it. ‘So what now?’

  He leans back in his chair. ‘Well, you need to decide what it is you want, Dr Culpepper. If money were no object and all you wanted to do was find out more about Stefano McCourt, Ms Boldini could take on the case. She could follow Stefano McCourt, knock on doors, interview people.’

  ‘How much would that cost?’

  He flicks through to the bottom of his pile of papers and removes an envelope, before handing it to me. My eyes skitter to the figure at the bottom of the letter and I try not to choke.

  ‘I’ve no reason to think she wouldn’t do an excellent job. But the money isn’t really your issue.’

  ‘I think it is at that price.’

  ‘What I mean is . . . we can try to find out anything about Stefano McCourt from his tax affairs to his shoe size. But the one thing we can’t find out is whether he really is your father. There are only two people who could know that for certain. Unfortunately, one of them – your mother – is no longer with us. You definitely couldn’t ask the man who raised you to undertake a pater
nity test?’

  My chest contracts. ‘No. I couldn’t do that. He can never find out about this. It’d be . . . terrible for him if he ever found out she’d deceived him. That he’d brought me up all these years thinking he was my father and . . .’ My voice trails off and I look up at him, before stressing: ‘He can never find out.’

  ‘In which case, there are only two other options open to you. The first is that you learn to live without ever knowing.’

  I feel a sudden wave of nausea. ‘What’s the second?’

  He clasps together his hands. ‘You could go and ask Stefano McCourt yourself.’

  Chapter 11

  Ed

  Ed lies in bed on a bright Thursday morning, staring at the ceiling. A pale sun shears through the shutters and the light hurts his eyes. He feels like he’s getting the flu, though he hasn’t even had a cold in years.

  ‘You’re going to be late. It’s nearly six forty-five,’ says Julia gently, as she kneels next to the bed.

  Her slender nose is crinkled, the rims of her eyes are tinged pink, yet she’s still a vision of poise and beauty. She’s dressed in a pale grey, softly tailored suit that compliments her gym-toned legs. A delicate diamond necklace spills into the notch where her clavicles meet and the nails on her pretty hands are neatly painted in a glossy shade of nude. Everything about her exudes breeding, quality and class.

  Ed, on the other hand, feels tired today. And old. There is a sickly knot in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘You haven’t been for a run again this morning. That’s the third day in a row,’ she says, but it’s not a criticism. He started running in his early twenties, when he was completely broke and joining even the grottiest of gyms wasn’t an option. Now, the need to start his day outdoors, to work up a sweat, is as much a part of him as the blood that pumps through his veins and the swirl of skin on his fingertips.