Coming Home (28 page)

I laughed again. He always knew how to make me feel better.

‘Please?’ he said. ‘I’ve missed you.’

We met at the Indian restaurant in the High Street—the same one that I’d begged my parents to take me to for
my twelfth birthday. As I walked in, it smelled exactly the same as I remembered it smelling all those years ago: a welcoming blend of spices, chutneys and poppadums. I inhaled deeply, my eyes closed, feeling again the excitement of that first ‘grown-up’ birthday dinner.

Luca was at a window table. When he saw me, he jumped up and enveloped me a big hug. I closed my eyes, my face pressed against his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heartbeat. I let go reluctantly only when he started to unwind himself from me.

‘So what happened? Exactly how bad are we talking?’ he asked after the waiter had settled us at the table. The whole sorry tale came tumbling out.

‘It’s a shocker about your dad: agreed. But I don’t think you’ve ruined your relationship with Tom,’ said Luca when I’d finished. ‘He’s a bloke. He seemed pretty easy-going. He’ll understand.’

‘Funny. He said the same about you. Said he thought you looked like a nice bloke.’

‘Well, there we are. If he likes me, he’s a good guy. Don’t worry about it, Evie. Let the dust settle. So much has happened in—how long? A week? Ten days? Don’t be too hard on yourself.’ He reached for my hand and squeezed it across the table. ‘I think you’re doing really well.’

I smiled weakly.

‘You know what I think you should do now? Forget the whole thing for a bit. Have a glass of wine. Have some fun.’ He looked closely at me then carried on. ‘So, tell me … I’m changing the subject here … but which of our
dates—back in the day—was your favourite?’ He tapped his fingers on his chin, hamming it up. ‘Let me see. Was it that time—that
one
time, mind—that you beat me at tenpin bowling?’

As we stepped out of the restaurant much later that evening, Luca slung his arm gently around my shoulders like he used to do ten years earlier. My body remembered; unconsciously, it moulded itself into the contours of his and our steps synched as we walked towards Mum’s house. I slid my hand up under the bottom of his jacket and slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans.

‘Is this how I used to do it?’ I asked.

‘Perfect,’ he said, giving me a squeeze.

We walked towards the row of bus stops outside the old cinema.

‘Come,’ said Luca, guiding me towards the last one. Gently, with his hands on my shoulders, he positioned me against the glass of the bus stop shelter. He looked me up and down and stepped closer; so close I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face.

‘It’s this one, isn’t it?’ he breathed. I nodded, my whole body tingling. Luca moved even closer. ‘Twelve years ago and I still think about it.’

‘Really?’

He nodded and moved closer. ‘Yes. Every time I walk past.’

Holding my face in his hands, he placed his lips softly
on mine. ‘Was that how it was?’ he asked, referring to our first ever kiss. ‘Or was it more like this?’ His mouth touched mine again, and he pushed me up against the bus shelter and kissed me with a passion I hadn’t thought about for a decade.

I couldn’t sleep that night. Kissing Luca had been a revelation. I’d thought that James had left me too damaged, too cynical to get involved with anyone for a long time.

But the possibility of a relationship with Luca showed me options that I hadn’t previously wanted to admit existed; it pushed me to question how my future might pan out. Until tonight, I’d seen myself alone in Dubai, striving to achieve in my career; living a comfortable life, but a life away from family and true friends. I’d never questioned that; although a boyfriend would be nice, Dubai was what I thought I wanted more. Luca, tonight, had swayed the way I saw the world. It was as if the blinkers had fallen away. The future opened up in front of me, a smorgasbord of possibilities, of different directions … despite everything else that was going on in my life, I felt a flicker of optimism.

I tossed and turned in bed, admitting to myself the possibility that one day I could move back home; I could live in London, close enough to keep an eye on Mum. If I moved back, much of the subliminal worry about Mum that I carried with me in Dubai would disappear. Maybe Luca and I would even try to make a go of it, get married, have children of our own. James had dangled all those
things in front of me then snatched them away, but now I realised that it wasn’t him I missed as such, it was what he represented, what Clem had: the next stage of life. I dared to imagine a future that included my new brother. My head swam with possibilities.

P
ushing open the living room door the next morning, I found Mum stranded in a sea of boxes. Bubble wrap, brown tape and crumpled pieces of brown paper were strewn all around her. She looked not unlike an over-grown child on Christmas Day.

She didn’t notice me at first, so intent was she on what she was doing. I stood and watched her—this woman who was my mother; this woman whose life had been built on the lies of her husband; this woman who was soon to find out that her late husband had had another son and now had a baby on the way—and I felt a huge surge of love for her. I shifted and then she looked up and jumped, surprised to see me. She brushed a strand of hair from her eye with dusty fingers.

‘Oh! There you are! I was wondering when you’d surface.’

It was 7.30 a.m., hardly late, but it looked like Mum had been up for hours, maybe even all night.

‘I’m clearing out the china!’ she said, unnecessarily. Her eyes were shiny and bright, her face slightly flushed. ‘Why don’t you get a coffee and join me? It’ll be fun!’

I could tell Mum was on a high—manic, perhaps. Still, I
did as she said and we passed a happy couple of hours going through the mountains of crockery and glassware she’d accumulated over the years. She was very considerate this time, asking me about each item before deciding to throw it out. It was exactly how I’d hoped we’d have gone through Dad’s things. I knew it was her way of apologising about the other night.

‘Would you like this, Evie?’ she’d ask, producing a coffee pot, a tea set or a pair of salad servers. ‘It was my great-grandmother’s …? But it’s quite vile, isn’t it!’

I enjoyed the closeness with her, the rare normality. When she was like this, Mum was brilliant—giggly and fun. But by 9.30 a.m., we began to tire. Mum sat back in an armchair, let out a deep breath and admired our handiwork. The pile for the charity shop was five times the size of the ‘keep’ pile.

‘You got back late last night,’ she said.

‘I had dinner with Luca.’

‘Dinner?’ she asked. ‘With Luca? Just the two of you?’

I flushed, remembering the way we’d made out like teenagers in the bus shelter.

‘He’s a good catch, you know, Evie,’ Mum said. ‘You could do worse.’

‘Oh, Mum, really. We live in different countries.’

Mum snorted. ‘So you think you’re going to meet a husband in Dubai? Like that James? Seriously, Evie? He was a no-hoper from the start.’

‘Hmph.’

Mum settled back in her chair. ‘Marriage isn’t about
skydiving and champagne for breakfast, darling. It’s about companionship, trust, respect, not Flash Harries.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘James wasn’t the right man for you.’ Mum’s tone was soft. She didn’t mean to hurt me. ‘All I’m saying is don’t ignore what you’ve got right in front of your nose, just because it’s familiar … the love of a good man is a valuable thing.’

I couldn’t help myself: ‘Is that what you had with Dad?’

Mum sighed. ‘Oh, Evie. Meeting your father was like being hit by a train. He knocked me off my feet. He was so charming, so totally convinced that he and I were meant to be together and he was relentless in his pursuit of me. He made it clear he wouldn’t give up until I married him.’ She paused, rubbing the finger where her wedding ring used to sit, then said quietly, ‘It was very flattering. But maybe I should have taken things slower.’

I looked at the floor. This was my moment. I may never have such a good opportunity again. I took a deep breath and looked up at her. ‘What do you mean?’

Now Mum was quiet. She stared out of the window, a pensive look on her face. I counted slowly to fifteen trying to control my breathing, then Mum’s eyes snapped back to me. ‘Oh … oh nothing, darling.’

I was tired. Tired of the lies, tired of hiding what I knew and tired, almost, of life itself. I did a little cough to clear my throat and then I said it: the sentence that was to start unravelling what was left of our family. Had I known where it would lead, I might have shut up, packed my bags and gone straight to the airport.

‘There’s something I need to tell you … about Dad.’ I pressed my lips together.

Mum shifted back in her chair, but said nothing. I looked around the living room, looked anywhere but at her. I took in the familiarity of the room: the trinkets and glassware jostling for space on the shelves, the walls covered in paintings, the familiar old sofa with its floral covers, the cream carpet that showed a little too much of the wear and tear it’d been subjected to over the years, and I felt wretched. Mum looked expectantly at me and nodded, as if to make me spit it out.

‘It’s not easy to tell you this, Mum, especially given what happened … you know … with Graham …’ I paused, but still she didn’t say anything. I took a deep breath and jumped.

‘Do you remember when I went to Coventry’ Mum nodded. ‘Clem wasn’t the only person I saw. I met someone else. I went there to meet him.’

Mum’s brow furrowed. ‘Who did you meet?’

‘A guy called Tom. A student.’ Mum got up and went to the window. I couldn’t see her face—leaning against the windowsill, she was looking at the floor, examining the carpet as if the secret to life was inscribed in its pile. My eyes followed her gaze. The carpet was paler, bushier, behind the television, where no one ever trod. A layer of fine dust lay like icing sugar on the top of the skirting board in the corner. It was to this layer of dust, to that patch of pristine carpet, that I talked.

‘When I was going through Dad’s papers I found that he had a second email account. It was how he communicated
with someone called Zoe.’ I paused to see if Mum was going to say anything. She stayed quiet. ‘He was having an affair. Had been having it for years.’ It sounded so tawdry. I would never have imagined the words ‘affair’ and ‘Dad’ in the same sentence. I ploughed on. ‘And they had a child. A boy. He’s nineteen now. Dad stayed with them every weekend. When we thought he was away for work?’ I paused. ‘That’s who I was seeing in Warwick. Tom. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t about you. It was about me: he’s my half-brother and I needed to meet him.’

Mum didn’t say anything. She was also staring at the carpet. I could just about make out the faded stain where I’d spilled the Mother’s Day cup of tea I’d made her when I was six—the dark spot of tea in a patch of lighter carpet where Mum had scrubbed. I wondered if she was remembering the same thing. I couldn’t bear the silence. ‘He’s at university there.’

I buried my face in my hands. I didn’t want to see Mum’s reaction. I wanted to shut everything out; shut it all out. I heard her get up. She sat down next to me, peeled my hands off my face and held them in hers.

‘Darling,’ she said. ‘I know. I’ve known for years.’

M
um put her arms around me awkwardly as we sat next to each other on the sofa, and stroked my hair. I clung onto her. She felt so small and thin.

‘How could you put up with it?’ I sobbed, my tears making Mum’s jumper wet. ‘Why didn’t you do anything? I can’t believe you knew all this time!’

‘Ssh,’ she said. ‘Shh, Evie. It’s OK. Shh.’ She rocked backwards and forwards with me.

Eventually, I pulled away and sat up. Mum took out her hanky, looked at it and handed it to me. ‘It’s clean, I think,’ she said. She brushed her own eyes with a finger. ‘Now I’m going to make us a nice cup of tea.’ She picked her way through the piles of boxes and china and I heard her clattering about in the kitchen.

I went in after her, propping myself up on the counter. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? About Tom, I mean? Why didn’t you confront Dad? How could you live knowing he was cheating on you every weekend? Oh, Mum. I don’t know how you did it.’ As she bustled about making the tea, it hit me that maybe she blamed herself for him straying. Was she ashamed?

‘Darling, let me just finish making this and we’ll sit down and I’ll answer all your questions. Now go. Go and wait. I’ll be through in a sec. You want normal or Earl Grey?’

I flopped back onto the sofa, flummoxed once more by the secrets my parents had kept from me; by the lies that had couched my childhood; the pretence of normality that had been constructed around me. The feeling was unsettling, like trying to walk against the direction of motion on a fast-moving train. Out of everything, I kept coming back to one thing: both Mum and Dad knew how much I’d missed Graham—they knew about that hole in my heart—so why hadn’t either of them told me I had a half-brother?

Mum came back in, a pot of tea and two cups and saucers rattling on a tray.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ My voice was whiney. I sounded like a child. Mum held up a hand to stop me, but I had too many questions.

‘How did you find out?’ I asked. Mum poured the milk and strained the tea leaves like it was any other normal day at home; like we were the normal family we appeared to be, not the tangled mess of death, infidelity and lies that we actually were. ‘
When
did you find out?’

‘Evie, your dad may have been a clever man,’ she said finally, ‘but he wasn’t as clever as he thought he was and, although I have my weaknesses, darling, I’m nobody’s fool.’

‘But how did you find out?’

‘Well, funnily enough, you told me.’

‘I told you? How could I tell you? I didn’t know myself till the other week!’

‘You told me by accident. A year or two, I suppose, after Graham died. You didn’t know what you were saying.’

‘But how?’ I couldn’t understand what Mum was telling me. How could I have told her something I didn’t know myself?