The Secrets We Keep

by Jonathan Harvey

‘I’m sure you’ll think of something.’

  ‘I thought I saw Dad today.’

  I don’t want to hear. Another pathetic sighting. We’ve all had so many over the years.

  ‘I went to Nan’s. Had another letter from her. I’d had enough. Went round, and he’s sat there on her couch.’

  My stomach flips over. I fear I am going to be sick again. My heart races. What on earth is he saying?

  ‘What?!’

  ‘It wasn’t him. It was so weird.’ He starts to cry.

  The little drama queen! Dangling the carrot like that! Making me think . . .

  ‘Of course it wasn’t him, your father’s dead.’

  ‘It was his identical twin. You never told me he had a twin.’

  ‘Are you making this up?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Nan gave him up for adoption when they were born. He was brought up in Canada. Recently got in touch.’

  ‘A twin?!’

  Owen nods. ‘I think I’m going mad. I freaked out. I am freaking out. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. He was really nice. Bit shell-shocked by Nan. I am, I’m going mad. Why did Dad keep so many secrets?’

  That gets me. I feel sorry for him. I might be heartless. He might be seriously pissing me off. He might have just thoughtlessly wrecked everything in my life, and his. But he is still my son. My first-born. My little boy. And right now he looks so helpless.

  His phone rings. He takes it out of his coat pocket. He sighs. I look. The caller ID tells me Dylan is calling. I snatch the phone from him and answer. I say nothing. Then I hear Dylan’s voice.

  ‘Sweetheart, can you meet me tonight? Usual place.’

  I pause. As I hear his intake of breath to say something else, I speak.

  ‘Listen, you dirty old pervert. Keep away from my son. And this family. Forever. Got that?’

  I hang up. I hand the phone back to Owen.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Why?’ Suddenly the volcano has erupted again. ‘Why is important what he said?’

  ‘I dunno, it just is.’

  ‘Well, it’s not!’

  ‘And he’s not a pervert. It was a two-way street.’

  ‘You disgust me.’

  He laughs. A short, shrill shriek of affrontery.

  ‘God, everyone needs to lighten up round here.’ He is so bloody dismissive as he passes me and opens the fridge door.

  ‘Did I say you could stay?’

  He looks round, incredulous. ‘You’re really kicking me out?’

  ‘Owen, do you not have any concept of the upset you’ve caused?’

  He fold his arms. And suddenly he’s his father. His father in a business meeting where things aren’t going his way and he has to be really patronizing to get his pathetic or ill-conceived point across, because everyone has to listen to him, because at the end of the day he’s the bloody boss. Well, Owen is not the boss in my house.

  ‘I know it’s a fucking nightmare, Mum. But we’ll work our way through it. Me and Matty’ll sort it out. And I’m sure Lucy and Dylan will.’

  ‘And what about me?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘You all work it out. But say it’s my birthday. And I want to go to Pizza Express. What do we do? All sit round playing happy families? You just didn’t think, did you?’

  ‘Yeah, but . . .’

  ‘You lot might be all right, but what about me? What about me and my best friend?’

  He looks incredulous again. I reach out and slap him hard across the face. I know it’s hurt him, because it certainly hurts me.

  ‘Out of my fucking house now, you heartless little brat!’

  And he doesn’t like that. I have crossed a line, just like him, and he is offended that I’m encroaching on his territory.

  ‘And take your dad’s coat off.’

  He tears the coat away from him and drops it onto the table. ‘If you knew the truth about Dad.’

  ‘I know everything. He had affairs.’ And then, pointedly indicating him, I add, ‘Everyone does, apparently.’

  ‘Oh, there’s worse things than that, mother.’ He leans into me. He scares me. ‘And if you knew them, you’d burn that coat and everything that smells of him.’

  He heads for the door. I call after him, following him to the hall. ‘Owen? Owen, what d’you mean? You’re making stuff up now, and it’s not funny.’

  At the front door he turns to look at me. He’s crying.

  ‘I’m not a liar, Mum.’

  And he goes. The door swings shut and he’s vanished. Like Harmony behind her magazine. Like Danny off the cliff. Like Cally to Mexico. Like my lovely mum.

  Everyone. Everyone in my life vanishes eventually.

  Danny: The Nineties

  The world at my feet

  By the mid-nineties, it felt like I had the world at my feet. We started our first club, China Crisis, in 1993 after a few years of running one-off nights in other clubs. With the money I’d saved from You Know What we managed to secure a longterm lease on two disused warehouses by the old flower market in Vauxhall for forty grand, and before you could say Top Night Out we were running the latest destination venue for London clubbers.

  I’d wanted to call the club Milk from the off. Instinctively I knew it had legs. But Natalie thought my byline – ‘the white stuff’s good for you’ – was too druggy, and so she persuaded me to go with China Crisis. Neither of us were particularly interested in China, it’s just that the first slow dance we ever had, all those years before, had been to ‘Wishful Thinking’ by China Crisis. It was our song. And we both agreed China Crisis sounded like a decent name for a club.

  Also, it made me feel like I was turning the tables on all those racist twats at school who used to say I looked Chinese. I’ll take that insult and run, thank you.

  I knew our good fortune wouldn’t last forever. All clubs have a shelf life. They’re there for you right now. And that’s it. I just didn’t know what would bring us to any sort of close, or when that would be. Everyone knows that in clubland you can be blown away in the next breeze as somewhere younger and cooler opens. But for now, we were the new kids on the block – or the new kids on Vauxhall Cross, anyway. Me and Natalie had got married with some strangers we’d met on the street at Marylebone Registry Office as witnesses, and we had a loft apartment in Shoreditch, which was yet to get trendy. Owen had been born in late ’93, and we really did feel like we were living the dream. I had a roof over my head, I had money rolling in, and I had what felt like my first ever proper family.

  Mini-me

  Owen didn’t half look like me at that age. Poor sod. I mean, I didn’t have anyone in my life who could verify this. And it’s not like I had any photos of me from that age – or any age, really. But I knew, looking at him, it was like stepping back in time. And because of that I was determined to make sure this little fella, who could make my heart leap with joy better than any ecstasy tablet, was not going to end up feeling anything like I did as a kid, and not end up in the sort of places I had. If there was one thing I could do, I told myself, it would be this. And it was to that end that I kept on striving to keep my nose clean, and the club buoyant, and the punters happy, and my wife like she didn’t have to want for anything. Whatever she wanted, I’d try and make it happen. I had people to do it for now, and I knew that I would. No matter what.

  Honour amongst thieves

  There were some girls in one night celebrating a birthday party. They were on the DJ’s guest list and therefore allowed in the VIP area, which was a cordoned-off area up some stairs to a balcony which overlooked the dance floor. Each night I would go and do a meet and greet with everyone up there and get them some free champagne (Pomagne in a ponced-up bottle, always already open – how did that happen?) and when I got talking to these girls, one of them turned out to be called Honour. She was beautifully spoken, and when she said she was brought up in Little Venice, I told her I used to know someone from there. When I told her it was Gretchen Tate she
nearly keeled over. She was Gretchen’s daughter. She said she was going to put me in touch with her mum. I couldn’t help laughing to myself. Gretchen, bringing a kid up amongst all those robbers, thieves. And look what she’d called her. Genius.

  A lady who lunched

  ‘I got out of the lifting game years back. I grew tired of it. Too old. And every store detective in London knew the face. And gone were the days where I had the get up and go to actually get up and go further afield to other cities. The criminal world’s changed. The gentlemen have gone. There’s no place for women any more. It’s all about drugs. IRA. Guns. I can’t be doing with it.’

  Gretchen had had work. I could see that. I’d never seen plastic surgery close up. Why would I? It hadn’t really come into fashion yet, and I didn’t know the first thing about it, but you’d have had to be Stevie Wonder not to work out she’d now got lips like undercooked sausages.

  ‘I liked you, Danny. You had instinct. Everyone thinks they’ve got it. They haven’t. It’s a rare few. Still. You got out and done well for yourself. I’m proud.’

  She’d taken me for lunch at the Ritz. I had to wear a jacket. I’d borrowed one off my accountant. It was like acting in a play on the poshest stage set in the world. It made me think: so much of life is a performance. Putting on an act. Seeing it through with conviction. When are any of us ever just ourselves? Hardly ever.

  ‘You ever need any help, you come to me.’

  ‘Help?’

  ‘One day you might. You never know.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind, Gretchen. But it’s my aim to be able to stand on my own two feet now. Do you . . . d’you still see Linda? My mate’s sister?’

  She shook her head and tapped her cigarette holder, an inch of ash falling into an ashtray.

  ‘She bad-mouthed me. She ripped me off. I’m good to people, Danny. I expect the same in return; shame, really.’

  I remembered another time when I’d come for afternoon tea in a posh hotel. I was a child. We had the same tower of cucumber sandwiches and cakes. Same pot of tea. But it hadn’t gone so well.

  I wondered how my life might’ve been different with Gretchen as my old girl. Thinking of Honour, and her plummy voice, and her good skin and fine clothes. I pictured the childhood: leaves on trees that weren’t in parks; chauffeurs taking me to private school; success, and belonging, and . . .

  And I had to remind myself I’d not done too badly, all things considered.

  She’d asked to see photographs of Owen, so I’d taken a packet. She leafed through them, placing them on the table in front of her like she was reading my fortune.

  ‘He’s adorable, Danny. And I can see you in him. Would you like any more?’

  I shook my head. It was hard to explain. Instinct had taught me everything I knew. How to sell sex. How to own every E in Soho. Actually, how to sell E when I’d never even taken it myself. How to succeed in business. But it hadn’t taught me parenting. And it scared me. Owen scared me. I’d had to keep an eye on so many people in the past, but this was a whole new ball game.

  ‘Well. Natalie wants another, but I’m not sure.’

  ‘And what Natalie wants, Natalie gets?’

  ‘Usually.’

  Owen brought me so much happiness. And so much fear. What if I got it wrong? What if I messed his head up, the way my folks had mine? I’d been in scary situations in the past, but none felt scarier than this. Why double that up with another kid to fret about? It felt like too much for me to handle.

  As I was walking down Piccadilly afterwards, I saw the rent boys gathering. I saw the men circling. I saw other things, naturally, but I always had that instinct for a transaction. And I thought about how my life had changed. I found the spot where I last saw Sam. The world had changed – well, my world had, the Circus itself had. And it made me think of what led me there. And seeing Gretchen again had got me thinking:

  I wonder what ever happened to my mum?

  Bouncer

  One of the bouncers at China Crisis was an ex-copper who’d been kicked out of the force for doing something dodgy, passing on information to a gangster or something. He liked to think of himself as something of a part-time private dick, so I set him a challenge. He’d do anything for money, this one. I told him to find my mum, and if he did, I’d bung him five hundred nice ones. Good lad – he found her in three days. I didn’t ask how. But I spoke to him on the Tuesday night, and by the Friday morning I had an address and a telephone number. The rest was gonna be up to me.

  But as soon as I had the details, I went cold on the idea.

  Natalie tried to be the voice of reason. But I just saw it as the voice of treason.

  ‘She might’ve changed. Prison might’ve reformed her. She might go to AA. You never know.’

  In my heart, maybe I did. Instinct.

  ‘And we might be denying Owen a grandparent.’

  Or making matters ten times worse.

  A lady of letters

  I wrote a letter to her. It was the Nineties, you did that in those days. Email was just arriving but not everyone had a computer, let alone electronic mail. When we first got the internet, me and Natalie shared an email address for ages.

  I enclosed some photos of Owen for her to see, and said the ball was in her court. I had heard over the years that she had been to prison and I knew she’d have no way of finding me, as I’d run away from Hansbury but was now settled in London. If she wanted to get in touch, drop us a line, sort of thing. Another thing people did in the Nineties.

  The lady at Victoria Coach Station

  She was smaller than I’d remembered. But then, I’d not seen her for about twelve, thirteen years. And I didn’t remember the Northern Irish accent being quite so strong. She looked lost amidst the chaos of the coach station but she looked smart, with her hair freshly set and her winter coat all buttoned up against London’s icy chill. I didn’t know whether or not to hug her so I opted for shaking her hand, which she looked relieved about. We’d decided she’d stay at a cheap B & B near the coach station on Ebury Street.

  As we walked along she talked ten to the dozen, and I realized that in the past the alcohol must have muted her. As a child I remembered the vast acres of silence, the staring into space; I could go days without her speaking to me. All those words she’d never said, it was like she was saying them all now, to make up for lost time. She put me in mind of the club kids off their tits who talked shite if you engaged with them while you were going about doing your job.

  But I could tell she was sober. I just knew. And she assured me she’d knocked that on the head years back, ever since coming out of prison. I settled her in her room, and then we took a cab over to the loft to meet Natalie and Owen, and she was sweetness personified. She’d brought some cheap perfume for Natalie, which Natalie received like she was being given a bar of gold bullion. And she brought some clothes for Owen that were far too small for him. It was clear even to her, and I felt for her embarrassment; it was as if we’d just seen a physical example of how shit she’d been as a mother. She then kept saying, ‘Shall we go for a walk to the local park?’ only Natalie had made us some tea, but Mammy was insistent on it. ‘No, we’ll go for a walk to a nice park. That’s what families do. Come on, where’s your nearest park?’ So we got a bus up to Shoreditch Park and walked around for a bit, but you could see that Mammy was freezing her tits off, so I suggested we go and grab a coffee somewhere, and we went and found a cafe. She was edgy, nervous now, as if she might be running out of things to say. And that if she did that would be a bad thing, because in the silences, one of us might be tempted to say, So. You were a pretty shit mother. Do we hear an apology springing from your lips?

  Or, And what were you inside for, Mammy?

  Or, Do I have a twin?

  Although I’d never told Natalie that personally. Mostly coz I didn’t want to believe it was true. Even though there was the possibility that my twinny might walk into the club one night and go, ‘Surprise, surpri
se!’ You never knew. Stranger things had happened. And if something like that did happen, I’d just feign innocence. Nobody else knew that Dad had told me. Make it up as you go along. Usually worked for me.

  Natalie mentioned that I had a mobile phone and Mammy was all inquisitive, and so I showed her it, and then she started acting like I’d handed her a ticking bomb. ‘Fancy London uselessness’, I think was the phrase she used.

  She said she was working back at the glass factory, only this time she was cleaning, and she described it as ‘a beautiful job’.

  ‘The girls are lovely. I mean, I’m the only white one, but some of them have immaculate personal hygiene.’

  Yeah. I thought. You didn’t have much of that when you were lying face down in a puddle of your own piss, did you, Mam?

  She didn’t ask me once about my time at Hansbury, or running away, or what my childhood had been like. She behaved, nerves aside, as if we’d not seen each other for a couple of weeks and she’d always been this fine upstanding pillar of the community. It was at once unsettling and a relief. I didn’t really want to think about Hansbury these days. When I did, I got anxious. And she was the reason I’d been there.

  So, fine. We could all draw a veil over it and pretend it hadn’t happened. That was completely fine by me.

  I told her I’d been to see Dad before he’d passed on, and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

  ‘He made my life hell, Natalie. I can’t say I’m sad to see the back of him.’

  And then she said she had a new man in her life. She’d met him at Alcoholics Anonymous – at this point me and Nat shot each other a look; it was the first time she’d mentioned anything of this nature – and they were very happy together. He was a mechanic at a ‘beautiful’ garage a few miles from where she now lived. And he was a good man. And a family man. The only problem was, his family were no longer talking to him, which was ‘a great big shame’. She hoped we’d come up to visit soon.

  She then kept going on and on about how she was going to take the clothes she’d brought for Owen back to the ‘beautiful market stall’ and ask the woman to swap them for bigger items, and then she’d send them down next week.