by Lucy Diamond
Left to pick up the pieces, sleep-deprived and consumed by worries for the future of his son, Craig had struggled and stumbled through those early months: the surgery, the pitfalls and problems, as well as the moments of sheer fatherly delight. Writing about it helped him deal with the complicated mess of emotions that he experienced, and when he ran the idea of a weekly article past his editor, the column was duly commissioned. By sheer serendipity, Frankie, a freelance illustrator, was asked to provide the artwork for his page each week and so their relationship began – as words and pictures initially, two people doing their jobs. But quickly, and like millions of other women around the country, Frankie found herself falling for funny, capable, wonderful Craig and his devotion to his boy, looking forward to receiving his new instalment every week, and cheering him on from the sidelines as she illustrated each piece. They’d met at the newspaper’s Christmas party and had sought each other out, exclaiming, ‘I love your work!’ in drunken sincerity, before ending up, much later on, knocking back whisky in a nearby bar and telling one another their life stories. She’d moved into Craig’s flat six months later, and when Fergus had started talking and called her ‘Mumma’, neither of them had stopped him. It was, all things considered, the happiest of happy endings.
And it was enough, Frankie thought now, as she sat down on the carpet and Fergus talked through his elaborate new track layout with her, and chose which engine she was allowed to have (the worst one with the wonky wheels, obviously). Forget Harry Mortimer and his shocked expression, forget his dagger-eyed wife – to hell with the lot of them, Frankie told herself fiercely. This small lovely family of hers right here was enough. This was plenty.
Back in Yorkshire, the Mortimers were all struggling to come to terms with the shockwaves caused by Harry’s announcement. Stephen was driving his parents to the airport, a freezing silence splintering the atmosphere inside the car, despite his Herculean efforts to make conversation. Whenever he glanced across at his dad in the passenger seat, it was like looking at a stranger. How could he have done that to Mum?
Meanwhile, Paula was peeling potatoes for a roast dinner, her head in a spin. A sister, she kept thinking. A half-sister who’d existed all this time, completely unknown to the rest of the family. What was her agenda? Had she grown up feeling resentful of Dad? What did she even look like? Her fingers shook and a wet potato slid from her hand, bouncing to the floor, where Oscar, her wire-haired dachshund, made an immediate dash for it. ‘No!’ Paula admonished him, but her voice cracked on the word and she found herself sliding to a kneeling position on the lino and bursting into tears. She didn’t want this to be happening! She wanted it all to be unsaid, undone, for life to go back to the way it was before today. ‘Oh, Oscar,’ she wept, as he lost interest in the potato and pushed his nose against her arm in a show of canine sympathy. ‘What are we going to do?’
On the other side of town, Dave kept staring into space, seemingly miles away, occasionally raking a bewildered hand through his hair. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he murmured now and then. ‘I just can’t believe it.’ Bunny knew what a person in trauma looked like. She steered him to the sofa, tuned the radio to the soothing burble of cricket commentary and found him a beer. ‘Don’t worry,’ she kept saying in her calmest voice. ‘Everyone will get over this. Everything will work itself out.’
John, too, was struggling with the situation. Once Robyn and the children had returned from her mum’s, he’d given her the bare bones of the story, but then closed down under questioning, telling her he didn’t want to talk about it any more. His phone kept ringing, but he sent the calls to voicemail, his face locked in an unreadable expression. It was like having a wounded lion pacing about the house, snapping at the children for bickering with each other, snarling at any attempted small talk. Robyn couldn’t help a disloyal sigh of relief when he eventually took himself off for a long run.
It was only once he’d gone that Robyn realized just how shocked and upset she was herself by the whole drama. Harry and Jeanie were the central dynamo of the Mortimer engine, solid and dependable, powering everyone else. With their relationship now seizing and faltering, what would it mean for the rest of the family?
Over at the airport, having said goodbye to Stephen and thanked him for dropping them off – he was a good lad, he really was – Jeanie wheeled her suitcase up to the check-in desk without a backward glance. Dramatic chords rumbled in her head, an ominous crescendo building as she came to a decision. ‘There’s been a change of plan, I’m afraid,’ she said crisply to the man behind the check-in counter, showing him her boarding pass. ‘My husband is no longer able to come with me.’
Harry gasped. ‘I . . . Jeanie!’ he cried in dismay.
The man behind the counter looked from Jeanie to her husband. ‘Um . . .’
‘Yes, it’s a real shame,’ Jeanie went on. ‘But he’s going back to our house now, to think about what he’s done. And I’ll be taking the holiday alone.’ Harry opened his mouth, but she rounded on him with unexpected ferocity. ‘Don’t you dare say a word,’ she warned, poking a finger at him. ‘Not a word.’
Once again the man behind the counter looked from Jeanie to Harry, doubt writ large on his face. ‘Right,’ he said after an agonized moment. ‘So it’s just the one case to check in today then, is it?’
‘Yes, that’s right, just the one.’ Jeanie presented her passport, then turned back to her husband. ‘I’ll see you in a week,’ she said coldly. ‘If I decide to come back, that is.’
‘Jeanie,’ protested Harry. ‘Please. We need to talk. This is our second honeymoon!’
His wife stared him down. ‘It’s not our second honeymoon any more,’ she told him. ‘It’s my holiday now. And if you want me ever to forgive you, then you can jolly well bugger off home and leave me to get my flight. Without you. Because you’re not welcome.’
The check-in assistant’s eyes boggled. He glanced at Harry worriedly, seeming unsure what to say. A few silent seconds passed. ‘Um . . . So if you could put your case on the scale please,’ he said timidly to Jeanie.
‘No problem,’ she replied, just as Harry stepped forward to help her. She shooed him away as if he were an irritating bluebottle. ‘I can manage, thank you. Please go now. I’ll see you in a week.’
Harry and the check-in assistant looked at one another again. The fearful shrug from the younger man seemed to say, There’s no arguing with this one, mate. Harry bit his lip, trying not to think about the turquoise hotel pool they’d admired in the brochure, the dark-blue trunks he’d bought especially, the new World War II thriller he’d been planning to read on the plane. He knew when he was beaten. He recognized that determined set to his wife’s shoulders, that Just-you-try-it look in her eye, that pointy finger. Game over, his grandchildren would say.
He swallowed. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right on your own?’ he asked in a low voice, as the check-in guy sent Jeanie’s case trundling off on the conveyor belt.
Jeanie scoffed. ‘Will I be all right on my own? he says. Well, let’s hope so, eh. Seeing as I might have to get used to that.’ Turning angrily away from him, she fixed her attention back on the dazed-looking man behind the counter, lavishing him with her most dazzling smile. ‘You’ve been very helpful, love. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. Enjoy your flight,’ said the man, with a final anguished eye-flick over towards Harry.
‘I’m sure I will,’ said Jeanie and then off she went without a backward glance, hearing the barnstorming finale of the 1812 Overture start up in her head, cannons and all, as she marched towards the Departures sign.
Harry meanwhile stood there dumbfounded, watching her go, until the people who were waiting to check in next began making polite Excuse Me noises behind him and he had to step aside. The wheels of his case squeaked plaintively as he trudged in the opposite direction to his wife. Then he stopped outside the WH Smith as a thought occurred to him, and he reached inside his jacket for his phone.
‘S
tephen? You haven’t left yet, have you?’ he asked when his son answered. The airport seemed to seethe around him, a mass of busy, laughing people pushing trolleys and talking excitedly, while he stood there in the centre of them: a hunched, forlorn figure with his suitcase and nowhere to go. ‘Ahh. It’s just that there’s been a slight change of plan.’
Chapter Five
The heat seemed to weigh down oppressively on Robyn as she hurried along the pavement towards Sam and Daisy’s primary school on Monday afternoon. Well, that had been a rubbish day at work yet again, she thought crossly, checking her watch and hoping she wasn’t going to be late. She was supposed to finish at two o’clock, which in theory gave her plenty of time to drive home and have a cup of tea before walking up to meet the children, but as usual she’d been waylaid by extra tasks.
Back in the day, Robyn had worked at the university, like John, as a lecturer in the Biochemistry Faculty, but these days she was mostly a dogsbody. (‘Robyn? She used to be this, like, real high-flier’ she had once heard John’s tactless Aunty Pen telling some new boyfriend or other, unaware that she could hear, ‘but these days she . . . well, I don’t know what she does with herself, to be honest. Pushes the Hoover round? Makes cakes?’) A dogsbody who did all the housework and went out three days a week to be a part-time lab technician at a secondary school across town: that was her. Sure, it wasn’t the most taxing job for someone of her scientific background, but the hours fitted in with her own children’s school day, and it got her out of the house – further than the supermarket at least. Except that every now and then there’d be some supply teacher in, like today, who’d talk down to her patronizingly, as if Robyn was completely thick and didn’t know her beakers from her Bunsen burners. Or there had been the day last week when two of the naughtier boys in one class had surreptitiously ‘liberated’ the classroom stick insects from their glass box, and it had been Robyn’s job to recapture them all afterwards. She had crawled around on the floor trying to catch the little buggers, thinking ruefully of her Masters degree and the respect she’d once been afforded by her peers.
Sometimes she just missed being ‘somebody’, that was all.
Dashing through the primary-school gates now, she felt frazzled as she joined the sea of waiting parents gathered in the playground, where the sweet, piping voices of infants singing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ came wafting through a nearby window. Phew, made it, she thought, ferreting in a pocket for a tissue, in the hope that she could dab her sweaty brow before anyone noticed how shiny she was. It was so muggy, and she’d been in the middle lab at school where the windows didn’t open properly; the heat had sent the classes stir-crazy all day.
Just as she was mid-dab – embarrassing! – she realized that one of the mums nearby was addressing her and turned apologetically, crumpling the tissue within a fist, to see that Beth Broadwood, PTA superstar and mother of four clever, sporty daughters, was gazing expectantly at her, presumably waiting for her reply. ‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ Robyn confessed. ‘What was that?’
Beth was giving her a strange sort of smile, one Robyn couldn’t quite interpret. ‘I said, I was sorry to hear the news. I hope you’re all okay.’
Robyn stared blankly at her. ‘The news?’ she repeated, then guessed the other woman must be talking about John’s parents. Oh, goodness! Had word spread that far already? ‘You mean . . . about Harry and Jeanie?’ she asked warily. Was Beth referring to the airport drama, or the revelation about Harry’s other daughter? she wondered. She couldn’t help feeling disloyal for even entering into a conversation about it, when John had been so reluctant to tell her, his own wife, the full story yesterday. She was sure he wouldn’t want the whole playground gossiping. And how come Beth Broadwood thought it was any of her business anyway?
‘Oh!’ said Beth, looking confused herself. ‘No, I meant about John. Losing his job,’ she added, a moment later when Robyn didn’t respond. She turned red. ‘Sorry – I’m not being nosy. It was just something Paul said . . . Maybe I’ve got it wrong. Probably. I just wanted to say I hope you’re okay anyway.’
Robyn’s brain was working very fast, but she didn’t seem to be making sense of this conversation. What the hell was Beth on about – John losing his job? ‘We’re fine, thanks,’ she managed to say, her mind still spinning. Beth’s husband Paul worked at the university too, she remembered now.
‘Right. Of course you are! Anyway, I’ll . . .’ Beth’s teeth were bared in an awkward grimace. ‘Here come the kids,’ she said in the next moment, sounding relieved.
The singing inside the school had come to a close and the first children were emerging from the building, some hand-in-hand and deep in conversation, others practically bouncing with the release of freedom, one dreamy-eyed boy running a thoughtful hand along the railings. Beth melted into the crowd as she spotted one of her blonde, pigtailed daughters, and Robyn was left standing there in a daze. Beth had to be mistaken, surely? John would have told her if he’d lost his job! Except . . . She remembered how strangely he had been acting lately, how distracted he’d seemed. He would tell her news like that, wouldn’t he?
Here came Sam amidst the throng anyway, head and shoulders above the others, however hard he tried to fold himself into a smaller size; and Robyn waved a hand in the air, trying to stop thinking about her husband. Sam’s dark hair was sticking up at the front, she noticed, probably where he’d wiped a sweaty hand through it earlier, and there was a grass stain on his shirt. With his brown eyes, the mud-splat of freckles and his broad shoulders, Sam was Mortimer through and through: John’s mini-me. It pleased her, on a very deep level, that her boy was cast from the same mould as his antecedents, unmistakably the latest in the line. Today, though, she looked at him and saw her husband’s closed face. What happened, John? Why are you keeping secrets from me?
Ah, and here came Daisy too, talking earnestly to another girl – about mosquito larvae probably, or the lifecycle of a cockroach, judging by the bewildered look on her companion’s face. Robyn felt a pang for her daughter, who always seemed so unaware that other children found her behaviour strange. ‘She is so weird,’ Robyn had once heard a group of girls sniggering to one another, and it had taken all her restraint not to grab them by the throats and tear into them. With her gorgeous red hair and big wonky smile, sensitive Daisy was desperate for a best friend, but found herself excluded from cliques and party invitations with painful frequency. ‘Hello, darling,’ said Robyn, as Daisy, engrossed in conversation, appeared on the verge of walking right past her.
‘Oh!’ Daisy blinked in surprise and then beamed. ‘Mum, did you know that a ladybird might eat five thousand insects in its lifetime? Five THOUSAND, Mum!’
‘Wow!’ Robyn cried, hugging her and Sam, then delved in her bag to find some cheesy crackers, which they fell upon like starving hyenas. Across the playground she noticed that Beth was gazing at her again, with that same strange look in her eyes. Robyn turned away hurriedly, but not before she realized what lay beneath the woman’s expression.
Pity, that was it. Beth Broadwood was gazing at her in pity.
Bunny had felt bad for leaving Dave on Monday evening when he still seemed so dumbfounded with shock about his parents, but she’d had the Willowdene meeting booked for two months, and the lady organizing it had phoned three times in the last week with parking information and a checklist of Bunny’s requirements. A microphone? A PowerPoint display? Snacks? ‘Or shouldn’t I ask?’ she’d tittered conspiratorially. No, it would be impossible to back out now.
‘Go round and keep your dad company,’ she instructed her boyfriend as she grabbed her car keys, then fluffed up her hair in the hall mirror. ‘Take him for a pint and a game of darts, distract him with your best small talk. Better still, why not see if he wants to stay with us for a few days? It can’t be very nice for him, being stuck at home on his own.’
‘Good idea. What would I do without you?’ Dave said gratefully as she kissed him goodbye.
�
�You’d probably still be lying in the road with your bike wheels spinning,’ she said, as she always did to that question.
‘Almost certainly,’ he agreed. It had been an unusual way to meet the love of your life, after all. Bunny had been on her way to work one morning a year or so ago when she’d seen a Vauxhall clip a cyclist on Micklegate right in front of her, sending him flying. She’d been feeling pretty good that day, what with all the weight she’d lost, not to mention the atrocious husband she’d lost too, and she’d promptly stopped the traffic, called an ambulance and put the unconscious Dave in the recovery position. Once he’d been whisked off to A&E, she had carried on towards work for a few minutes before an impulse made her turn and catch a bus to the hospital instead, in order to track down the (admittedly rather handsome) cyclist.
Later on, when Dave came round, woozy on painkillers and concussed, he’d gazed up at Bunny’s kind face, haloed with her blonde hair, then blinked and mumbled, ‘Are you an angel?’ (His brothers never tired of guffawing about that particular detail of the story; in hindsight, perhaps it had been a mistake to tell them.) Bunny had smiled down at his lovely battered face and replied, ‘It’s your lucky day.’ And so it had proved, for them both.
Bunny slowed now as she approached the village of Willowdene and then, moments later, parked with practised aplomb, whipping skilfully into a tight spot outside the Parish Church Hall. People were always surprised at what an excellent driver she was, particularly men, as if they expected someone who liked false eyelashes, short skirts and frosted pink gel-nails to be useless at any practical skills. ‘Full of surprises, me,’ she would say if anyone made a comment. She enjoyed being able to confound people’s expectations, to keep them guessing. ‘Don’t judge this book by its cover.’
