Making of Us

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘And that was why, Lydia, when I saw that article, saw those sisters all so alike, all so happy, I wanted you to be able to have that. Because it was bad enough when your mother died. I thought that that had ripped the heart out of everything. I thought that that was the worst it would ever, ever be. But when that little scrap of a boy was presented to me there,’ he pointed at the front door, ‘on my own doorstep, my own nephew, my own family, well, I can’t think there’s a worse thing to go through, I can’t think there’s a greater pain to be felt. And your dad …’ He pressed his hands to his face. ‘Telling your dad. Coming to your place in the early hours and telling him that his little man had gone … He never recovered. He never ever did.’

  ‘But what about this?’ She pointed at the pink stains on the baby clothes. ‘How did they get on his clothes? The same paint as in my room, the same paint as on the concrete?’

  Rod fingered the blue cotton. ‘This is what he was wearing,’ he began, ‘when your mother died.’

  Lydia stared at Rod and waited for him to elaborate.

  Rod sighed. ‘He’d been crying, in his basket. Your mother had been painting your room. She went to him with paint on her hands. She couldn’t leave a baby to cry, not ever, your mum. She was too soft. I was there, and your dad. We were having a bit of a barney, me and your dad. It was pretty strong stuff. We’d sent you down to the playground with the woman next-door.’

  ‘What were you arguing about?’

  ‘We were arguing about …’ He sighed again. ‘We were arguing because … well, it was me. I’d just split up with a girlfriend. A proper serious girlfriend. Asked her to marry me and she laughed. Said, “You’re not a keeper, Rod.” Can you imagine?’ He tutted to himself. ‘Anyway, I was drunk. I came to see you all, hoping for a bit of comfort. Your mum was there, painting your room. I sat in there with her for a while, watched her with that pink paint. I was always, I think, a little bit in love with your mother, Lydia, if that doesn’t shame me to say so. And I think your dad knew that. He teased me about it, but it was never anything serious. But I think, after you were born, he started worrying about things …’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Well, like the fact that you didn’t look like him. I don’t think he felt he ever connected with you, not properly. I hope that doesn’t sadden you, for me to say that?’

  ‘No.’ She laughed hoarsely. ‘No, that doesn’t sadden me in the slightest. I couldn’t be any sadder about it than I already was.’

  Rod looked at her fondly and continued. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I was there in your room, with your mum. It was hot. She was wearing an old pair of denim shorts and a t-shirt that I’d given her … Aerosmith, I think it was. She was sitting next to me on your bed, very close, because, like I say, I was in need of comfort. She didn’t touch me, though, because her hands, they were all covered in the pink paint. But still your dad walked in with you and saw us like that and he maybe just got the wrong idea. Maybe there was an atmosphere of intimacy in the room. And in fact there probably was because, well, me and your mum had a secret. Well, we had two secrets, in fact. You and your brother. Because I was the only person who knew where you both really came from.’ He paused and fingered the tabletop. ‘I was there with her, both times, when she went for treatment up in London.’

  Lydia screwed up her eyes and then made a strange groaning noise. ‘Thomas was a donor baby too?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Yes. Of course he was. Well, he wouldn’t have been your dad’s, would he? I mean, your dad couldn’t make babies, that was the whole point of the donor clinic. That was the whole point of everything. And no one could ever have told him that. He’d rather have gone without babies than admit that he couldn’t sire his own. And your mother wanted babies more than she wanted anything. Babies was all she wanted. And so there were two options; either she could go with another man … but your mother would never have done that, she loved your dad too much, she loved the very marrow of him, you know? … or she could go for a stranger. And so she did that, and asked me to go with her. I helped her choose your dad. I helped her choose you, and your brother. You both came from the same man.’

  Lydia closed her eyes as a whole new realisation dawned upon her.

  ‘So, yes, we had our secrets, big, dreadful secrets, too. But then this boy was born and you know, strange as it was, he looked like your dad which should have been a good thing, but it wasn’t a good thing because, of course, if he looked like your dad, then he looked like me a bit too. And your dad just walked into this room and saw us there and he must have suddenly decided, suddenly believed, that his worst fears were true, that me and your mum were having an affair, that both his babies were mine. A fight ensued, and that was when your mother took you to the neighbour’s and asked them to take you out of the building.’

  ‘Did I know?’ asked Lydia, feeling the oddness of asking someone a question about something she’d experienced herself. ‘Did I know what was happening?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘not at all. You were only three. All you knew was you had a new baby brother and your mum was painting your room pink. Anyway, your father, he started accusing me and your mother of all sorts, started saying that she had always preferred me because I was the bright one. Huh! Ironic really as everyone always preferred my brother for being the handsome one, but there you go. He was saying, “You two! Always all giggly behind my back, always cosying up to each other, you must think I’m stupid. I know that girl’s not mine. I’ve always known that girl’s not mine. And now look at this boy.” And he points at the room next-door. “He’s the spit of you, Rod. He’s the effing spit of you!”

  ‘He had it in his head that because he hadn’t made a baby in five years of trying then he must be infertile, and that the only explanation for the babies was that they were mine. And I had to bite my tongue on telling him the truth. But the more Glenys tried to convince him that the babies were his, the angrier he got. And then the baby started to cry. Your mother picked him up. Your father meanwhile …’ He paused and sighed, tremulously. ‘Your father took a knife from the kitchen drawer. Oh, Jesus.’ He put his hand to his heart as if to try and still it. He gulped. ‘Just thinking about it, still, it makes me feel like I could throw up. He took a knife and he went after your mum. Your mum gave me the baby. I wish she hadn’t given me that baby. If she hadn’t given me that baby, I could have done something. But you know, Lydia, honestly to this day I don’t believe he ever meant to hurt her, I really don’t. I think he just wanted to scare her. I think if he’d got near her with the knife he’d have frozen up, because he did love her so much. But he went for her, with this knife, and I stood there with the baby … and the whole thing happened so fast. I just stood there, holding the baby.

  ‘First your mother ran to the balcony and then your dad was there, brandishing this knife. And your mother …’ He sighed. ‘I was watching all this, but I promise you it happened so fast, there was nothing I could do to stop it. She climbed on to the wall of the balcony, trying to get away from him. And then it looked to me as if she was trying to make it across to the next balcony, the next one along from theirs, and one minute she was there, and the next she wasn’t.’ He stopped and drew in a breath. ‘And it was silent for just a moment. All I could hear was myself, breathing; breathing so loud. And then it started, the screaming. Call an ambulance. Call an ambulance …’

  ‘And … and … I was there?’ asked Lydia. ‘I saw it? From the playground?’

  ‘No. You didn’t see it. The neighbour had taken you around the corner, for a pee.’

  ‘I was peeing when my mum died?’

  ‘Well, yes, probably,’ said Rod apologetically. ‘And when the neighbour saw what had happened she took you away, quickly, around the back. Took you to her friend’s flat.’

  ‘And what was I told? What was I told about my mother?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The usual stuff, I suppose. “Mummy’s gone to live with the angels,” that
kind of thing. And then you came here to stay with me for a couple of nights.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Well, yes, the baby went to Mum and you came here. Only for two nights. Your dad never let me see you again after that. We never said another word to each other after that day. But you were here, with me, while they were holding your dad for questioning. They were going to do him for manslaughter but there wasn’t enough evidence, especially with my witness statement. Because whatever happened that day, I know this much: your father did not kill your mother. Your mother, well, I don’t know. I don’t know what she was thinking. Maybe she thought she was bloody Spiderman, I don’t know. All I know is that in less than thirty seconds she went from holding her baby in her arms to being dead on the ground.’

  ‘She died immediately?’

  ‘Oh, yes, instantaneously.’

  Lydia lowered her eyes and stared at some old crumbs embedded inside a deep whorl on the tabletop. ‘I don’t remember anything,’ she whispered.

  ‘Well, no, that’s probably best, isn’t it? A blessing? At least, that’s what I thought when you were a child. We just didn’t talk about it. We didn’t talk about your mother. We didn’t talk about your brother. Your mother’s family never forgave your father. And they never forgave me for what they saw as letting him “get away with it”. Our family went into themselves completely. Nobody was ever the same again. Least of all your father.’

  Lydia looked up at him and grimaced. ‘Nor me,’ she said.

  He looked at her sadly and smiled. ‘Well, yes,’ he said, ‘that’s what I feared. Everyone thought because you hadn’t seen it, because you couldn’t remember, that you wouldn’t be affected by it. But living all those years with a man who didn’t believe you were his, cut off from your family, without a mother … It can’t have been easy.’

  ‘It was not easy,’ she said, grimly. ‘It was not easy at all.’

  He smiled at her sadly again and then sighed. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you and I have got so much to talk about. I’m sure there’s a million things you’d like to ask. Why not stay the night? I’ve got a spare room, it’s all freshly made up. I can open a bottle of wine. It’d be nice to have a proper chance to get to know you again. We really were very close once, you and I, as bizarre as that might sound.’

  She looked at his gentle, fine-featured face and thought that, yes, she could believe they’d once been close. He was the sort of man a small girl would like to have as an uncle. She could imagine him pushing her on swings and taking her to the shops. She could imagine viewing him as a friend.

  ‘That would be nice,’ she said, ‘I’d like that. There’s so many thing I want to know. About my mum. And the baby. Have you got photographs?’

  ‘I do, yes. My mother passed me down her albums when she died a few years back. All the family photos. Pictures of you as a child, pictures of your mother …’

  ‘I’ve got those,’ Lydia interrupted. ‘My dad gave me his albums. What I meant was, have you any photos of the baby? Of Thomas?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes. I believe I do. And, if you like, tomorrow morning, after we’ve had a nice wholesome breakfast, I could take you to the cemetery over at Penrhys. I can take you to see where he’s buried, little Thomas. If you’d like?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lydia, feeling breathless with a mixture of wonder and sadness and awe, ‘yes, please. I’d like that. I really would. Because he’s not just my brother, is he?’

  Rod glanced at her quizzically.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘he’s their brother too. He’s Dean’s brother and Robyn’s brother and he’s Daniel Blanchard’s son. I want to see it for them. For all of them.’

  ‘Good,’ said Rod, ‘good. That’s sorted then. Now, I think,’ he peered over his shoulder at the clock on his kitchen wall, ‘yes, it is! The sun is definitely over the yardarm and I think it’s time for a glass of wine. And let me tell you, this will be the single most enjoyable glass of wine of my entire life.’

  MAGGIE

  Through a rather complicated system of printing off e-mails and taking them to the hospice, getting Daniel first to read them and then to reply to them in hard-to-decipher shakily written French, then typing them at home and sending them to Marc, it transpired that he would be arriving at lunchtime on Thursday, with the intention of staying indefinitely – in other words, and Maggie was glad that it had never been said explicitly, until Daniel died.

  She’d bought some Teach Yourself French tapes and had been listening to them in her car as she drove around between home, Libby’s, work and the hospice. She was listening to it now: ‘J’ai laissé ma porte déverrouillée’, said a woman with a slightly patronising tone of voice. ‘J’ai laissé ma porte déverrouillée,’ repeated Maggie with as much verve as she could muster, wondering if she would ever have cause to tell someone in French that she had left her door unlocked.

  She flicked her indicator to the left and turned off the main road into the driveway of Daniel’s home. Marc was due in an hour and she was going to strip Daniel’s bed and put some clean bedding on. She also had some bags of shopping on the back seat, just some basics, some bread, milk, cheese. (Only Cheddar. She’d lingered over the earthily named French cheeses at the counter in Waitrose, but lost her nerve; how could French cheese purchased in Bury St Edmunds possibly compare to the real stuff?) She also had some apples, some bananas and a couple of pots of chilled soup. And a bar of soap. (It was always nice to be the one to start a new bar of soap, even if the existing soap belonged to your own brother.)

  She turned off the engine and the patronising lady stopped halfway through saying something about a shoe shop. As she pulled the shopping from the back seat and let herself into the building, Maggie spoke French under her breath. ‘Je vais à la maison de Daniel. J’ai quelques achats. Je m’appelle Maggie. Comment s’est passé votre vol?’

  Maggie was wearing her new sundress – it was good at her age that she still had nice arms and that her décolletage had not yet turned to crêpe; it was nice to be able to uncover herself on warm days. The dress was white. The day that lay before her felt so fraught with darkness and uncertainty that she had been drawn subconsciously to a colour that signalled newness and innocence. On her feet she wore putty-coloured gladiator sandals, and her highlighted hair was pinned up away from her face.

  As she walked through the front door of the flat she heard a text message arriving on her phone. It was from Marc: Chère Maggie, je suis dans un taxi. Je serai là en une heure. Exactly an hour later she came to the window at the sound of tyres over gravel and saw a car slowing as it approached the building. Maggie pulled down her sunglasses. It was a taxi and there was a man sitting on the back seat. She put the sunglasses back on to her head and then decided in a fleeting moment of vanity to put them back on her face. The light was harsh today and she wanted to make a good, and hopefully youthful, first impression.

  She’d straightened herself out and then she ran down the stairs and greeted him, with a wide and welcoming smile, on the driveway.

  She’d had her first French phrase all planned out and repeatedly rehearsed in her head: ‘Bonjour, Marc, ravis de vous rencontrer.’ As the cab pulled into the driveway she went to the passenger door and saw him lean forward to open it. Bonjour, Marc, she thought to herself, bonjour, Marc. But as he climbed out of the back of the taxi, all the words in Maggie’s head just drained away and she was left instead staring at him, with her jaw slightly slack and her hand clutched tight to her chest. Because the man climbing out of the back of a taxi outside Daniel’s flat was, in fact, Daniel.

  He smiled at her. ‘You must be Maggie,’ he said. ‘It is lovely to meet you. I am Marc.’

  Maggie still said nothing, still stared at the man who called himself Marc but was clearly, in fact, Daniel. ‘I …’ she began, but no words followed.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked, letting the hand he’d put out for her to shake drop back to his side.

  ‘Yes. Oui. Sorry, I … er
…’ Her brain slowly started to function again and all the thoughts that had been stuck in a logjam began to filter through. This man was not Daniel. This man was too healthy to be Daniel. This man was Marc. This man, then, was not only Daniel’s brother, but also Daniel’s twin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Daniel didn’t tell me, he didn’t say … I’m sorry, I don’t know, what is the French word for “twin”?’

  The man called Marc smiled at her and said, ‘Jumeau.’

  ‘Jumeau?’ repeated Maggie.

  ‘Oui. Yes. Jumeau. Jumelle if it is a girl.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and then tried to process another unexpected fact. Marc could speak English. ‘Your brother told me that you couldn’t … that you only spoke French.’ The man smiled and laughed, and at the sound of that laugh Maggie already knew that this man may have the same face as Daniel but he was a completely different person. ‘My brother,’ he said, pulling his wallet from his back pocket to pay for his taxi ride, ‘has not seen me for thirty years.’ He shrugged as if to suggest that no further explanation was necessary.

  He paid the driver and bade farewell to him in confident conversational English, and then he turned and smiled widely at Maggie. ‘You are not as I expected either,’ he said.