The Day We Met (25 page)

“Of course,” Alice says. She sits down between her daughters. “That's fair enough.”

I smile at the girls, and resist the urge to stare and try to find our similarities. But it seems I don't have to: Alice is looking hard at me, and then at Vanessa, and then at Mum.

“So, you came to talk about the past, and it's got something to do with your daughter?” She is talking to Mum, treating her like a whole person, even after everything, even after the way we turned up and barged in. And it's more than that. I can tell we aren't going to need to do the big reveal: Alice has worked out already what Paul didn't want to believe.

“Yes,” Mum says, and perhaps seeing Alice's thought process as well, adds, “But maybe we shouldn't talk in front of your girls.”

Paul begins to agree, but Alice stops him. “No, it's fine. We're a family. We deal with everything all together. I think that's what makes us stick together. I hope so, anyway.” Alice nods for Mum to continue.

I take a breath, and Mum reaches out and takes my hand.

“The thing is, when I was going out with Paul, I got pregnant with Caitlin,” my mum says bluntly. “And I wanted to keep the baby, but I didn't want to keep Paul. No, that's not quite
right. I loved him, a lot. But I knew even then that we weren't for keeps. And so I wrote him this letter, this letter that I never sent. And I never told him about Caitlin, which was wrong of me.”

“I see,” Alice says very carefully, smiling reassuringly at her little girls, whose eyes are wide with shock. She looks intently at me and I hold her gaze, determined to take her scrutiny.

“And Caitlin came here to tell Paul…well, just that she exists, I suppose. Because I asked her to. I wanted to put things right. She went to see him the other day and he, well, he didn't react as we hoped. Caitlin was ready to come home, but I persuaded her not to. And I came to be with her and to…to tell him that it is true. I have proof.”

“Oh, Paul,” Alice says, her eyes filling with tears as she looks at me. “Look at her. She's the image of you. How could you even doubt that she is yours?”

It was the last thing I expected her to say—the last way I expected her to react—and yet there she was, just looking at me, and looking was enough. The sudden surge of relief at being seen, and being known as a whole person, almost knocks me to the floor. This is it—this is what it feels like to really know who you are—and it is Alice, not Paul, who has given it to me.

“It came out of the blue,” Paul says. “I was thinking of you and the girls. I didn't handle it right.” He looks at me. “I am sorry if I hurt your feelings. I'm so sorry. I got it all wrong….”

Mum pushes the open book toward Paul, and Alice walks around to read the letter over his shoulder.

I smile at Vanessa, the dark one, and she smiles back at me, nudging her sister, who mirrors her expression. “This is crazy, batshit mad, isn't it?” I say, the swearword making them giggle. “Oops, sorry.”

As they finish reading, Paul continues to stare at the book
for the longest time. And then he looks at Mum, and this look passes between them, this moment of recognition: a hello and a goodbye in a single moment. Mum nods, just slightly, and Paul looks at me.

The strangest thing happens as our eyes meet: I see the muscles of his face reform, and his eyes—that have been so closed off and embattled—really see me for the first time. For the first time, I am looking into the face of my father. The world shifts a little, and I realize that it will never be the same.

“I never knew a thing,” he says. “All these years…”

“No, you didn't, and that was my fault,” Mum says. “I thought I could do it all alone, and I could. But Caitlin couldn't. She shouldn't have had to. I was selfish.”

“We don't want anything,” I say to Alice, because she is easier to talk to than him. “Mum just wanted us to connect. We're not after money, or even contact, if that's not what you want.”

“What do
you
want?” Alice asks me.

“I'd like to be your friend,” I say, realizing all at once that this is true.

“So, that girl is, like, our sister?” Vanessa says. “From when Daddy went out with this lady, in the olden days?”

“That about sums it up.” Alice smiles, and looks at Paul. “It's a lot to take in, isn't it, darling?”

“It's cool,” Sophie says. “It's cool to just suddenly have a big sister! Daddy, isn't it cool?”

Paul nods, and for a minute he covers his eyes with his hands. “I couldn't understand how you could just leave the way you did,” he tells Mum at last. “I tried for a few weeks to find you, to ask you why. It hurt me. It hurt me a lot—more than I expected. There wasn't anyone else as important to me again, not until Alice. If I'd have known about Caitlin…”

“I know,” Mum says. “I know. I cheated you both of some
wonderful years of being together. And now here we are, strangers, sitting around a kitchen table. But hopefully we won't be strangers forever. Well, you two won't be, at least. Hopefully, you will try to get to know each other a little better. Build a friendship.”

“Are you staying in Manchester?” Paul asks me.

“I don't know.” I falter. “I'm not sure. I mean, Mum needs me at home, so…”

“I don't,” Mum says. “I need you to be happy and living your life, and to pop in for visits, but I don't need you at home.”

“Well,” Alice says. “We want to get to know you, Caitlin. We'd love to. When you think about it, this is a wonderful thing. A miraculous thing.” She laughs and claps her hands together. “I'm sure it will take time and lots of getting used to. And you don't have to stay here—we can come down to you. It will be easier, probably. We'll take it in turns. We're all going to be freaked out for a bit, but it's going to be just wonderful, I know it is.”

“I like you,” Mum says, smiling at Alice. “Yes, I like you a lot.”

Alice gets up and comes over to my mum, stretching out her arms. After a moment or two, Mum gets up and hugs her. And it's so funny to see his face as he watches them, that Vanessa and Sophie and I burst into a fit of giggles as Paul—our father—turns the color of a beetroot.

This is a copy of the cover of
Rhapsody in Blue
that my mum used to own on vinyl, and which used to belong to my granddad.

When I was about twelve, all the girls at school stopped talking to me, for reasons that I still don't really get. But there always used to be one person out of favor, and this time it was me. I arrived at school and gradually realized that I had been sent to Coventry. It made me miserable, so upset. I couldn't understand what I had done wrong. Mum had started working as a teacher at another school by then, and so I got home before her. She found me sitting on the stairs, sobbing my heart out.

“What's up?” she asked me.

I remember her dropping everything the moment she walked in the door, and putting her arms around me. When
Mum hugs you, there is always this cloud of coconut-scented red hair, the fragrance of a shampoo she has used since I was little. It's never changed. I told her about the girls leaving me out at school, and not knowing why they did it. Mum said they were jealous of me because I was beautiful, clever, and funny, and all the boys looked at me. I knew this wasn't true, but I liked that Mum thought it was. If Mum thought that way about me, then it helped me feel better. Everything was happening back then—hormones popping off in my body like fireworks. I felt like I'd changed completely from one day to the next. Not only the way I looked, but also the way I felt—the person I was.

Mum said that what I really needed to do was some interpretive dance.

I remember laughing, even though I was still crying, because it was typical of Mum to say something so stupid, so out of the blue, just to make me smile.

“No, I'm serious,” she said, kicking off her school shoes and unzipping her pencil skirt and dropping it to the floor, so that she was just in her tights.

“Mum!” I screeched. “What are you doing?”

“Getting ready for interpretive dance,” she told me, going into the living room. “Come on, you.”

In the living room she drew the curtains, which made the room glow a sort of pink. In the corner she kept her dad's ancient record player, and underneath it a collection of LPs that sometimes she would take out and look at, although I never heard her play them.

“Now this,” she said, carefully selecting one, “is what it's all about. George Gershwin,
Rhapsody in Blue
.”

“You're crazy,” I told her when she started up the turntable and then carefully lowered the needle to the record. How on
earth could old-man music cheer me up? I heard a few crackles and bumps coming from the giant speakers that had been part of the furniture for so long I had forgotten they had a purpose.

And then there it was. That single, soaring, vibrating note of a clarinet, cutting through the air so sharply that it almost lifted me off my feet in shock. I stood there, completely still, and listened to the soft rhythm of the piano, the repeated motif of the clarinet, and then the wave of the orchestra joining in.

“Dance!” Mum ordered me, swaying and pirouetting around me, waving her arms above her head. “Let's dance to the music and pretend that we are in New York City, and there are people everywhere, traffic crowding the streets, steam coming up through the vents and lifting up our skirts, and we are movie stars.”

I watched Mum jump and leap around the front room, while I was still riveted to the spot by the music. I'd never heard anything like it. I'd always thought that classical music, music with violins and stuff, had to be boring and dull. But this…this was thrilling. I closed my eyes and I could see the skyscrapers, the old-fashioned yellow taxis, and ladies in hats and gloves bustling along the street.

“Dance!” Mum grabbed my hand and dragged me after her. “Dance!”

I was twelve, and self-conscious, and still found my newly emerging body hard to understand, but the more I looked at her skipping around the living room in a whirl, the more I laughed and the more the music took over. And without really thinking about it, for the first time in ages I stopped worrying about how I looked, and I just joined in. We danced past the record player, making the needle skip a little, and Mum turned it up as loud as it would go.

Suddenly the house resounded with crashing music, filling
every corner with melody and noise and another world that I was somehow part of. We ran up and down the hallway, up the stairs; we skipped and pranced, twirled and wound our way in and out of rooms. We jumped on beds, and Mum even turned on the shower in the bathroom, sticking her head under the water and running away, screaming. So did I, the water running icy cold down my back and shoulders. We marched and stomped, leaped and ran. And then the crescendo came, and I felt almost like I might fly when Mum threw open the living room curtains and windows, and then the kitchen door, and we spilled out into the garden. Grabbing my hands, she spun me around and around, laughing as the world blended into a whirlpool of color, and finally we collapsed onto the grass, laughing. We lay there, then, in the spring sunshine, hand in hand, the grass prickling beneath my neck, Mum still in her tights, and everything was so perfect. So happy.

“The world is full of people who will try to bring you down, Caitlin,” Mum said, turning to look at me. “And full of things that will make you sad and angry. But they are only people and things, and you, you are a dancer. Dancers are never defeated.”

It was such a silly thing to say, and it didn't really mean anything, and yet I still think of it, sometimes. That crazy half hour of dancing round the house with my mum in her tights, listening to
Rhapsody in Blue
back when she was just merely eccentric and not ill. I think that, somehow, in some way, it taught me more about being resilient than anything else ever has.

It turns out that Esther loves staying in hotels. She's stayed in hotels before, of course, but she's probably been too little to remember them, or for them to matter to her in any real way. But for now, the idea of living in a big house full of bedrooms, where they bring you whatever food you like, and where there is a café for dinner and our very own bathroom, makes her very happy. She's sitting in the bathtub up to her ears in bubbles while Mum sings to her. Of course, it's ridiculous that she is still up at this hour, but she loved sitting in the restaurant so much, with her pretty dress on, sitting on a big girl's chair and all the waiting staff fussing over her, that I was glad I'd let her do it. I was glad to see the way her face shone in the candlelight, even when it was covered in a shiny slick of pasta sauce.

Today was good, I think. Long and odd. I haven't slept
since I woke up just before dawn and went into the garden. It seems like a dream now, like another world, another person. I am not actually sure that it happened, and yet the thought of it still makes me happy. Perhaps that will be what it's like when I meet the very edge of the cliff: perhaps it won't be frightening at all, but just like my meeting in the garden this morning. Reality doesn't always have to matter, does it? If it
feels
real, then that's all that matters.

I didn't even say goodbye to Greg when we left. He wasn't there. He'd gone to work while I was getting Esther ready. And it was so odd, because I felt like my leaving was a permanent thing. That somehow, when we drove away from the house, I wouldn't be coming back again. At least not in the same way.

Now, as I sit on the bed, I know and feel and see everything. Everything is completely clear. I know what the telephone next to the bed is for—I know its name, and I know how to use it. I know how to lock the door, which hotel I am staying in, on which floor, and why I am here. I know we went to see Paul and that, for a while, I lost it—though I can only remember that hazily, like meeting Ryan in the garden. Now I feel present and correct and whole. Healthy and hearty and righted. I don't know how long this will last, this random connection of synapses that make me
me
again, and so I get up and pick up my bag and gently let myself out of the room. I'm going to treat myself to a gin and tonic in the bar. After all, this might just be my one last stand. It deserves to be toasted with a drink.

I see Caitlin straight away sitting at the bar, wearing the pretty floral dress that I bought her, her black hair brushed out and shiny and rippling down her back. I stop and look at her. She looks so beautiful, like a butterfly that's shed her cocoon of black and decided to live. Her little bump rises expectantly
under her ribcage; her legs look long and pale in an unprecedented pair of high-heeled shoes. A pair of my red heels. She's toying with an orange juice, trying very hard not to look like she is waiting for someone. My heart leaps into my mouth as I look at her. There's something about her that's so hopeful and strong, and it terrifies me. Just like when she was a tiny girl and I waved her off to her first day of school, into a world where she would one day learn that not everyone loves her. I don't want to leave my Caitlin, nor my Esther. I want to always be here to tell them I love them, and that whatever happens, they can get through it. And that's the cruelty, the unfairness. It's not the disease that I'm scared of, or the strange, dark, wonderful world it's leading me into. It's knowing that I'm failing the people I love, and that there is nothing I can do to change that.

“Hello.” I approach Caitlin cautiously.

“Mum!” She looks surprised to see me. “How did you get out?”

I laugh and she blushes.

“You know what I mean.”

“How did I escape my prison, you mean?” I slide onto the seat next to her. “I let myself out of the door, of room 409, and I came down in the lift for a G&T. And I found you, looking, I might add, rather wonderful.”

“Stupid dress.” Caitlin looks embarrassed.

“You're waiting for someone, aren't you?” I say, tipping my head to look at her. It's impossible to describe how I am feeling at this moment: so proud, so loving, so protective, so sad and joyous, all at once. In this one second as I look at my daughter—a young woman now, a strong woman who has overcome so much to be sitting here wearing my red shoes, I feel it all. “Is the
person you're waiting for the reason you feel so happy, by any chance?” I add, remembering—miracle of miracles—our earlier conversation.

“It's stupid,” Caitlin says, and she looks at me as if to gauge whether or not she can talk about it with me.

“It's okay,” I say. “All of my marbles are present and correct for the moment. The fog has lifted, and I can see for miles and miles. Actually, just text your gran and tell her I'm with you, will you? I promised not to freak her out again.”

“Oh, Mum.” Caitlin blinks back tears, which collect in her long lashes, as she sends a message to her gran. Her phone buzzes seconds later.

“Gran says enjoy yourself,” Caitlin tells me.

“Tell me about the boy!” I urge her, tickling her a little in the ribs to annoy her, to stop her from feeling sad.

“I just met him, completely randomly,” she says. “He works in the student union bar, and takes photographs. I mean, I only met him two days ago, Mum. And he looks so stupid, like a flipping skinny Gary Barlow on speed. Stupid hair—and his dress sense, Mum! He wears ties, and hats for no reason. And ridiculous shoes. Like he really thinks about what he looks like. It's so dumb.”

“So he's a bit vain?” I ask, uncertainly.

“No, not at all,” Caitlin says, and the surprise is evident on her face. She looks up at me, earnestly. “Mum, he is
so
nice. I mean, I always thought nice was boring and easy, but it's like he decided to care about the world, and the people in it, and help them even when everything is quite clearly shit. I mean, who does that? Don't you think that's weird? Isn't that the sort of person you shouldn't get involved with?”

“A nice person who cares about the world and the people
in it?” I repeat. “No, you're right, you should totally stay away from him. Go out with a nice violent drug addict, or something.”

“But Mum,” Caitlin says, leaning forward. “I'm pregnant with another man's baby! What sort of man, even a nice one, wants a girl who is pregnant with another man's baby? I mean, who wants that world of complication in their lives? And can you even just go out with someone who's knocked up? I mean, can you just date? Without it having to end up in a relationship? And what about, you know…” She lowers her voice. “Sex. I mean, we haven't had any sex yet. We haven't even kissed, actually, and maybe, maybe this is all in my very confused and busy head, and maybe he just likes me as a friend, and has just been around helping me because he is nice, and…what am I doing in this dress?”

I reach out and put my hand on her head, just like I used to when she was a baby and getting in a state. I'd reach out and put my hand on the top of her head, and somehow it seemed to calm her, and eventually she'd stop crying and look up at my fingers, distracted. Caitlin does exactly the same thing now, probably wondering why my hand is on her head, and yet it works—it grounds her.

“Falling in love doesn't wait to happen at mutually convenient times,” I say, removing my hand. “You can't think about it that way. Greg and I, we couldn't have met each other at any other time in our lives—any earlier just wouldn't have worked. And we aren't going to get enough time together, and it is really sad. But the years we've had—the times we've had together—that's the gift.”

“You remember Greg?” Caitlin asks me softly.

“Of course I remember him,” I say. “How could I forget the man I love?”

“Oh, Mum.” She reaches in her bag for her phone. “Mum, call him. Call him now and tell him that you love him. Please.”

I frown and take the phone, and dial his number without thinking. It rings for a long time and then goes to his voicemail, the same message as it has always been, even when I first called him to book a job. He's never changed it. I feel like I'm phoning him back then, on that fresh spring day when neither of us knew how important that first phone call would prove to be. I listen to the sound of his voice from back then, back before I knew him, and I leave a message. “Greg, it's me. It's Claire. I'm with Caitlin in Manchester. We went to see Paul and it went well, I think. It went as well as it could go. Look, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling normal and together. And I just want to tell you, while everything in the world is exactly as it should be, I just want to tell you, Greg, that you are the love of my life. I have loved you more than I ever thought it was possible. I love you, and I will always love you. Even when I don't remember it. I promise you. Goodbye, darling.”

I hang up the phone, and it's only when I look at Caitlin's face that I get a sense of what I've missed while I've been away.

“Has it been very hard on him?” I ask her.

“Very hard,” she says. “But he never stops loving you, Mum, not for a second.”

I signal to the barman and order my drink.

“Caitlin,” I say slowly, taking a sip and feeling it fizz through me. “Listen to me, darling, while I have something to say that makes sense. Okay?”

Caitlin nods.

“You have to decide to let yourself be happy. You have to decide it now, for me. If this boy, this nice boy, makes you happy, then let him. Don't question it. Don't push it away because it
doesn't seem to fit with how things should be. Decide to be happy, Caitlin. Decide that for me, and for your baby, and for you. Don't spend a second worrying about what might have been, or what might be. Trust your heart to know what to do, because I promise you, the world might crumble away around you, your brain and body might betray you, but your heart, your spirit…that is what will stay true. That is what will define you. And when she is old enough to need to know this, explain it to Esther too. Tell her: What will be left of us all, is the love we have given and received.”

“Like in the poem at your wedding,” Caitlin says.

“Oh yes,” I say, and something chimes in me, falling quietly into place. Just like the poem at my wedding.

Caitlin puts her arms around my neck, and slipping off her bar stool hugs me in a way that she hasn't since she was a child. She is holding on to me, anchoring me, tethering me, trying to make me stay. And I wish with all of my heart that I could stay here with her forever. She is hugging me, squeezing me tight, and we know, somehow we both know that whatever happens in the weeks and months and maybe years that will follow, for both of us, this moment…this is our goodbye.

“Hello.” We pull apart and I see the boy, blond and clean-cut like Caitlin said, dressed to within an inch of his life, wearing the nicest smile I have ever seen. He doesn't look at me—he looks at Caitlin, and his eyes are shining. “You're here,” he says. “I wasn't sure if you would be, so I just thought I'd pop in and…you are here. So…that's good.”

“Um.” Caitlin's porcelain skin flushes pink, and she self-consciously smooths down her skirt. “This is my mum,” she says, gesturing stiffly at me.

“Oh! Hi, hello, Mrs., um, Caitlin,” he says, and offers me his hand. He has a good handshake—firm, decisive. And the
sweetest smile. And although he must know about the AD, he looks me in the eye. He doesn't look afraid of me.

“Hello, The Boy,” I say, and he looks perplexed.

“Mum, this is Zach,” Caitlin says. “He even has a name like a popstar.”

Zach laughs, and shrugs.

“So, you just thought you'd pop by on the off-chance of bumping into my daughter, who was just sitting in the bar in her only dress on the off-chance that you might pop in?” I say, exercising my God-given right as a mother to embarrass them both.